#gangmentality

The curation within bluecoat at the moment is extremely interesting; two exhibitions that sit alongside one another are William Kentridge’s- A Universal Archive and Jo Kushner’s- Postcode criminals, the reason I’m really interested by this is the contexts and content of the two exhibitions. Kentridge’s traditional prints explore issues concerning segregation between black and white people during the apartheid in South Africa; there are strong images and powerful tones to match the extremes of the situation. Postcode criminals however is a technological video work looking at how young men in L8 (Toxteth) and New York are treated by the police. The majority of the men are black and talk about how the police treat them regardless of knowing anything about them and try to punish them for gang violence. Although there are differences between the two exhibitions there are also similarities the most interesting for me is the link in the segregation between the police force and the young men and the black and white community represented in the apartheid. However rather than race the argument could be made that the uniforms of the people are what separates them, perhaps that is the new form of segregation.

The reason that I was attracted to this exhibition was the fact that there were three screens with one playing multiple interview shots with “scallies”, I think my actually words were “I wanna see what the scallies are saying!”  But to be completely honest it wasn’t the level of hilarious I was expecting. The interviews are concerning the gang mentality within communities in Totexth (Liverpool) and New York (America). The interviews are all with either masked men or black men, aside from 2 (I think) mixed race men, perhaps indicating that the gang mentality held by the police is focused towards black men rather than white, raising race issues. All of the men within the Toxteth film claim not to be in gangs and one claim’s that he and his brother were stopped outside their family home and charged with the gang act, it seems very far-fetched but you have to remember that we aren’t getting all the information. I cringe every time I here scouse men talking about how “hard” they are, but there were some people within this film that actually made me believe them simply by the attitude they had, whereas I just found other comical. One of the main questions raised in both this film and the New York film is are the police wasting their time, are there more important things they could be doing or are they needed as a deterrent? The New York men for some reason seemed much more believable and perhaps that’s because for me they are the un-known and that therefor makes them more believable. The American video talked much more about community wellbeing and the pros and cons of the police, something the Liverpool version did not, and I think that also helped to influence and sway the viewer or me anyway to find the Liverpool version more comical and un-believable. This project explores social and cultural issues of communities and the way of lives for young men living in poorer areas but also political issues of the targeting of young men by the police, does that therefore mean that there are no old members of gangs. I think not.