Half Blue
2019 - Installation (Installation)
10:00 minutes (video)
Joe Namy
Joe Namy’s Half Blue is an installation consisting of a video, a sound, and a sculpture, that triangulates a personal experience of the artist’s cousin Khalid Jabara, who was murdered by hate crime in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U. S. A in 2016. An event that garnered international attention, Jabara’s murder led to the Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act passed by US Congress in 2021. The act was named after Jabara and Heather Heyer, two hate crime victims whose murders were prosecuted as hate crimes but not reported in hate crime statistics. According to the Human Rights Campaign, the intention of the act is “to promote better hate crimes data collection as well as a more informed approach to hate crime prevention at the federal, state, and local levels”. Placed on the floor of the installation, Namy’s work features a 47-inch flashing light bar, half blue and half red, like the ones atop police cars. The alternating blue and red light seeps and pulsates, as the light bar evokes a familiar scene in many neighborhoods; one of systemic structural failure of the carceral state. Next to the light bar is a video projection accompanied by an original sound composition. The composition is interpolated with news reports and songs in what Namy calls a “playlist of getting over”. Redolent of R&B and hip-hop tracks, the playlist includes a vocal improvisation by Alya Al Sultani, as well as Arab American musician Halim El Dabh’s voice composition ADEMAELARD . In the sound composition a multitude of voices coalesce into a polyphonic elegy: the daily political othering of Arab Americans in media soundbites; the voice of Eric Garner’s daughter Emerald Snipes; excerpts from artist Etel Adnan’s book of poems Arab Apocalypse and poet Marwa Helal’s Census. Notably, Namy’s own voice relays an account of the two images that the artist took of Jabara (while testing out a new camera lens over Christmas break), that were later widely circulated in news reports of Jabara’s death. Flashing in red and blue text are facts, including the “oppression of omission” in the 2010 US Census checkbox for 3.5 million Arab Americans, and what might encapsulate this work: A SWELLING, A SWARMING, A BREATH, A LAMENT . The exhibition of this work also included communal listening and discussion. Namy is currently a Sundance Kendada / TIME Magazine fellow to develop the work into a short film.
Artist and musician Joe Namy’s practice encompasses sound, its history, and impact on the built environment. Working collaboratively through public sculptures and performances, Namy’s work considers the social construction of sound and the political forces that enable its transmission. As well, the artist’s work critically engages with the gender dynamics of sound, migration patterns of instruments, and the translation between languages, between score and sound, and between instruments, and bodies in movement and dance. Other projects by Namy explore the history and resonance of opera houses across eleven countries in the Middle East, and the archive of Arab American musician Halim El-Dabh, a pioneer of tape music (Wire Recorder Piece, 1944).
Colors:
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