Blacksmythe

Metropolitan Detroit area is now in the middle of a “perfect storm” with foreclosures skyrocketing. The art installation Shrinking Cities points to the role of globalization in this process. Those of us interested in racial politics have focused perhaps way too much on the US context, not wrestling with the interconnectedness of places like Tresor and Detroit. It isn’t just that Tresor wouldn’t exist without Detroit Techno, but rather the same types of jagged open-ness that produced techno in Detroit made it almost a natural fit for a place like Berlin. What happened in Detroit and other industrial cities in the Midwest accelerated because of the presence of black folk who were able to gain political power, sure. But given that Manchester went through the same process, what happened in Detroit has to be larger than racism. I’ve been talking to a photographer at Hopkins about creating a joint class that would combine photography with urban politics. Baltimore is probably the best place on the East Coast to try to tie some of these themes together somehow.

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