“Beyond The Digital Diaspora: Flame Wars” presented by Cheddie, Kempadoo, Richards and Piper

Panel Statement

Together we make-up an organisation entitled ‘Displaced Data’. ‘Displaced Data’ is an evolving association of artists and writers of color working with digital technology The association arms to encourage and foster debate concerning issues of cultural diversity, cultural democracy and digital technology and to encourage to the use and development of digital technology by artists of color.

The paper will use a visual illustration of my (Janice Cheddie’s) work on the net – which examines the intricate and complex system of hierarchy both in race and power – economic and the power of knowledge being developed within media/cyberspace. The work ‘Sweetness and Light’ produced for the project La Finca/The Homestead in April 1996 is the result. As the inevitable exploration of media/cyberspace, information networks and the use of new technologies takes hold I begin to look at analogies and comparisons. My thoughts and experience takes me to that of colonialism and the European expansionist past. While using the project as a example of some of the issues being raised and stated by black practitioners about and within cyberspace, I will expand these thoughts to look at ways in which the structures being put in place still presents a space time and new location for black expression and reasons why. In other words the issue of ‘leaky’ technologies’.