Neta Bomani: “Dark matter objects: Technologies of capture and things that can’t be held” (ARCHIVED VERSION OF VVR)
This Video Viewing Room features Neta Bomani’s Dark matter objects: Technologies of capture and things that can’t be held (2018–present), a storybook for children and adults about computational history and technology. The work was viewable from November 22, 2021–March 21, 2022.
This presentation is organized by Legacy Russell, Executive Director and Chief Curator.
Dark matter objects: Technologies of capture and things that can’t be held is a one-of-a-kind audiozine compiled by Neta Bomani for children and adults about how the master-slave relationship organizes social, political, economic, racialized, gendered, and other cybernetic relations contained within the feedback loop that produces technological infrastructure. The audiozine features music performances by Christelle Bofale and Contour alongside narration by Alexander Fefegha, American Artist, Ashley Jane Lewis, Bomani Oseni McClendon, Gabrielle Octavia Rucker, Galen Macdonald, Fred Moten, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Laolu Numa, Lina Chang, Marilyn Nance, Melanie Hoff, Sadé Powell, Simone Browne, Sol Cabrini de la Ciudad, Stephanie Dinkins, Sydney Spann, and Zisiga Mukulu. Read more at netabomani.com/darkmatter.
As part of the presentation of this work, Bomani is encouraging audiences to join her in supporting Survived and Punished NY by calling for New York state to deliver reparations for criminalized survivors. Read the report here. Make a tax deductible donation to Survived & Punished here.
Neta Bomani is an abolitionist, learner and educator who is interested in parsing information and histories while making things by hand with human and non-human computers. Bomani’s work combines archives, oral histories, computation, social practices, printmaking, paper engineering, zine making, and workshops to create do it yourself artifacts. Bomani received a graduate degree in Interactive Telecommunications from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Bomani has taught at the School for Poetic Computation, the New School, and Princeton University. Bomani has studied under Mariame Kaba, Simone Browne, Ruha Benjamin, Fred Moten and many others who inform Bomani’s work.
Still from Neta Bomani, Dark matter objects: Technologies of capture and things that can’t be held, 2018–present. HD video (color, sound; 26 minutes). Courtesy of the artist.