Migration, Boundaries and Belonging: Oppositional Histories on Glass and Race

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. The GEEX team reviewed the transcription, but it may contain errors. If you’re able, please refer to the episode audio before quoting this transcript. Email support@geex.glass with any questions.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

The silks, the glass, the silver, the diamonds… There’s not enough reflection, I think, in current curatorial practice in museums and heritage culture. As we celebrate the heritage culture of the 18th century — are we talking about the violence of that material culture? And when we see a Black child standing there with a silver collar… One of the things your work made me think more about, Cobra, which, again, we don’t want to think about: what’s underneath the collar, you know? Are there sores underneath that collar? Those kinds of paintings don’t want to show us that side, and yet they are showing it as well. They’re showing whiteness as consumption. And so I think what’s so fascinating is that you show us the underbelly of that, of what consumption is. Consumption can only be violent. 

KING COBRA  

When you’re talking about the juxtaposition of these figures, I also immediately started thinking about the ways that institutions take photos of people in departments. I was often, you know, tokenized in photographs. They position you with like a cohort of other white students. There’s not much difference. There’s also the same covering up of violence that happens outside of that photograph.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

No, you’ve really made me see that

KING COBRA  

Hey, this is King Cobra.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

Hi, everybody. My name is Kerry Sinanan.

EMILY LEACH  

Hi, I’m Emily Leach, and this is the GEEX Talks Q&A Podcast. I’m one part of the team behind GEEX, the Glass Education Exchange, along with Ben Orozco and Helen Lee. This year, the GEEX Talks lecture series pairs glass-y artists and researchers together based on shared themes in their work. You’ve already heard from our guests, King Cobra and Dr. Kerry Sinanan, who are paired together based on the theme of “Migration, Boundaries, and Belonging: Oppositional Histories on Glass and Race.” King Cobra is a sculptor and body modifier based in Brooklyn, New York. Dr. Sinanan is an Assistant Professor in Transatlantic Literature of the 18th and 19th centuries at the University of Texas at San Antonio. This conversation follows their respective GEEX Talks lectures from January 2023. Your questions shaped this discussion. Later on, I’ll talk a little bit about how you, as a listener, can participate in these Q&As and support public scholarship in glass.

EMILY LEACH  

Thanks to Wet Dog Glass and Vetro Vero for sponsoring this episode. You’ll hear more about our sponsors later on.

EMILY LEACH  

[ocean sounds] In this episode, we’ll be talking about the transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage. This term, the “middle passage,” refers to the forced migration of captive African people across the Atlantic ocean to the Americas. This is a violent history that’s discussed sensitively and with an insistence on the critical importance of specificity and detail. So, if you’re not in a place to listen, take care and join us for the next episode. That’s enough from me — back to the conversation.

KING COBRA  

Immediately when I heard about the talk, I was really interested in learning about glass beads in terms of like trade in the transatlantic slave trade, I didn’t really have any previous knowledge about that history. I always also wondered why I was attracted to glass. And I think, listening to like some of the points in your talk… It helped me to understand probably some some intergenerational interests that I had that I was never really able to explain or understand. Learning about that history through your talk really helped me to become more curious. It’s crazy, too, because my mom just started making glass beads. So I want her to also listen to your talk. But there was just like so much that I learned through your observations of like the paintings, the subtleties, but the compositions in the paintings, including glass, and these are all things that I was always interested in, but I never really liked dissected it. And so, the way that you spoke about it just really, like, stirred some things up inside of me that I didn’t know was there.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

It was just incredible to listen to Cobra’s talk and to see what she does with glass because, in many ways, I think it’s almost like a mirror image of what the 18th century wanted us to do. So if the work I’m looking at is designed to make sure that the Enlightenment period comes across as polite and civilized and rational. What Cobra’s work does is show what that’s really hiding through the medium of glass and other means other media, silicon, lots of other types of materials, but the specific use of glass in some of the exhibitions. And also in particular, “The Observatory”, just when you were talking about that reversal of all the power dynamics of gazing that the 18th-century part sheets that I look at are set up to establish. What I just really was so mesmerized on was the lines of connection and reversal. And just the long history. Just because we don’t know, in our minds, long histories doesn’t mean, as Cobra says, that we don’t sort of feel or sense them or know them in different ways. And my research on this whole area did begin with with thinking about beads just from the historical archives. So when I see Cobra’s work, and how you talked about using the very small details of beads, and where you put them and how you use them to invert concepts of beauty or adornment that was so powerful to me, so my mind doesn’t really stop dwelling and all the points of connection. And I just think listening to Cobra’s talk keeps alive for us how important practice, craft, practice, and memory are to add the other dimensions to these histories because they are still living memory or living embodied experiences for people. So it’s not just academic work. It’s academic work that has a life now. And I think that’s what Cobra’s talk really showed me and hopefully other people.

KING COBRA  

In all transparency, Dr. Kerry…. You know, they came to me and they were like: “we want to talk about the history of glass in relationship to the transatlantic slave trade.” And I’m like, “Cool, cool, cool.” And then I saw your picture. And I was like, “wait, what?” Because I automatically assumed that you were a Black person. And so yeah, I guess I’m wondering: what is your interest or what is your personal connection to this history?

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

I really appreciate that question because it’s always so important for us to, especially in academia and education, to consciously position ourselves in relationship to what we’re studying and to always be quite scrutinizing about why we’re doing it and what for because the academy, the university, the subject-disciplines are so inlaid with colonial power. So yeah, I actually grew up in Trinidad and the Caribbean and Port of Spain, my father’s Trinidadian but my family is East Indian heritage and would have traveled over on the ships from Uttar Pradesh as the region. A lot of that history is completely lost, which is really interesting as well. In her book, “The Door of No Return,” Dionne Brand actually talks about mostly the Middle Passage, of course, that door of no return from the west coast of Africa. But at one point, she also talks about migrants and forced migrants from India as being part of crossing. She says, “We have no history, but the black ocean,” is one of her lines. And when I read that I cried, in the sense that I know my history, my family’s history is entirely different to Black people in the Caribbean who were bought on the west coast of Africa. But we also came in the wake of that history to start to work on the plantations in the Caribbean, after British emancipation in 1833. And were subjected to forms of indentured labor that, while they weren’t, you know, chattel slavery is as sort of the nadir the absolute attempt to make people into property. You know, we also know we have more forms of slavery today than we’ve ever had. And so, indentured slavery was another sort of extension of captivity, captive labor. I did also grow up as a child in a house that was built on a former garden that was owned by a cocoa planter, Andre Ambard. And so I grew up in a house on Coblentz Gardens. And I knew as a child that this neighborhood had been sort of made by a plantation owner. And even as a small child, I would wonder: “how could you own slaves and build this beautiful neighborhood with beautiful gardens?” And it just… My child’s thought couldn’t understand because, as you said, Cobra, you know, enslavers are some of the most evil people in the world. So I think, from the very beginning, I always had this question about the duality of creating beautiful environments, beautiful houses, the Master’s House, you know, is always a beautiful house but it’s sitting in the midst of abject extractive violence. So I’ve always been fascinated with that. And then really coming through 18th-century studies, I really… I would say, my main object of study is, in fact, whiteness. No, it is the slave ship captain, my book at the moment is on is called “Myths of Mastery.” So it is just to really interrogate those white lies. John Newton is more famous for being an abolitionist and the finder of evangelical Christianity than he is for being a slave ship captain. And so I yeah, I mean, we can’t talk about whiteness without talking about what it does. But that… I think that’s been my journey. And thank you for that question. I think it’s important for us all to know why… And like you said, what part in that stream of memory and history we feel we’re standing in.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

Cobra, I would really be interested if you could talk more about memory and how through your work you learn, think with, and remember some of the histories and experiences of the Middle Passage and the people, you know, the 12 million people — more than 12 million, that’s the estimate — who were forced to make that journey? And how your work engages without that history and memory?

KING COBRA  

At first, I was definitely working with like personal history. And then as I have grown my altar practice, I’ve just been channeling more ancestral conviction and ancestral desires to create work. A lot of times I think about people’s lives that were sacrificed that were amazing artists, and that were never able to produce objects to be admired by the world. As an artist that has been one of the ways that I collaborate is with people that have already passed that still have a desire to make creative work that changes the trajectory of how people regard like dehumanization or racism. In terms of memory, I think a lot of times now I’m harvesting other people’s memories and other people’s feelings of revenge. I have a totally different relationship with it now than I have before. In a lot of ways, too, collaborating in the spiritual realm in this way, I’m led to researching new topics or things being brought to my attention that I would not have paid attention to before. So I think that memory can also kind of happen in real time where, you know, someone’s encouraging you to have a really specific memory about a specific thing so then you remember and you create work about it later. And perhaps that creates another memory for someone else viewing your work. Memory is definitely important in relationship to trauma, which is a consistent material in my work. And so, that way, I feel like memory is very important in a way that not only am I working with my own but I’m working with other people’s and thinking about ways to redesign it for my audience.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

That’s just so, so fascinating. And it really goes to the point of, you know, why I teach and research on the Middle Passage is because — as a event or a series of events over centuries — it’s really shocking how few people know about it. My students… I teach a lot of Black students and I have even got West African students in my class from last year and they did not know about the Middle Passage. One of my Yoruba students, he’s actually written an essay about how this was something that was not taught to him in the Nigerian educational system, which is a colonial educational system. For him to now sort of come to terms… I mean, there’s some sort of vague sense that people were taken away on boats but what the actual Middle Passage entailed, and how many people, and how… what the real details involved is something that I think Black students on both sides of the Atlantic have been sort of disinherited. As you’re suggesting, Cobra, there are other ways of knowing these things. And I think that’s a really important part of multifaceted types of research, and academic research, but also, art, craft, glassmaking, because we need multiple points of reconnection to these deliberately obscured and submerged memories. You know, I’m in a state right now in Texas, where they’re about to legislate so that we cannot teach any of these things. They have done it in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Arizona. We are about to see a roll out across the United States of a deliberate attempt to excise — thinking of that, you know, the violence — people’s own histories and stories and facts. So it’s become rather urgent to really keep the Middle Passage and as its ongoing legacies… Christina Sharpe has a way of putting it in her book “In the Wake.: And she says, you know: “The past that is not past. The past that is the present.” So there’s a reason people want us to stop thinking about the Middle Passage.

EMILY LEACH  

Hey, it’s Emily. Before we started recording, Kerry grabbed a couple of relevant books from her shelf. So I asked her if she’d like to share a short list of recommended books about the history and ongoing legacy of the Middle Passage.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

I mentioned Christina Sharpe’s “In the Wake,” which I think is just incredible reading for everybody. But it’s also about the week being a specific space of memory and presence for Black people — in America specifically and in Canada. You know, we’re seeing the ongoing violence, just very recently with Tyree Nichols, the ongoing violence. It’s every day. So “In the Wake” is something I’d really recommend. But also there’s a book, Sowande’ M. Mustakeem has written “Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex and Sickness in the Middle Passage.” And Mustakeem gets down into the archives and the way that white historiography really hasn’t before to tell us what is going on in the dark hold. Cobra’s work, “Big Black”, that really struck me too. When you described, in your talk, that feeling of being in a black space and looking out maybe through a chink and seeing another black space — that was another way of making us know what’s happening in the Middle Passage. A feeling and event, an experience, that’s not… that you can’t get from reading black and white print paper of the archive. So if anybody else hasn’t read “Zong!”, which is by M. NourbeSe Philip, where she takes the archives from the trial of the Zong ship where they were absolved from murdering their cargo, which was enslaved people — initially, Mansfield overturned that. But she takes those documents and cuts them up, reforms them into poetic pieces, that tell the story in a different way. So there are lots of ways for us to keep engaging with how we need to remember the Middle Passage. And I think Cobra’s work is so important for people to understand that it’s part of that “re-membering” over and over again, not just as a site of trauma but as a site of not been dislocated from one’s own history and ancestry, as you’ve said.

KING COBRA  

We cannot talk about the Middle Passage without talking about violence. I want to know, you know, what is the value of critically engaging with violence? I think about really intense forms of violence and really subtle forms of violence. And some of the paintings that you talked about during your talk… they felt really violent to me in terms of ways that younger Black kids were juxtaposed with the more rich and luxurious displays of whiteness. So can you talk a little bit about how you feel about violence, in terms of like glass history and also some of the things that you had in your discussion?

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

No, thank you so much for that for that question. I mean, I think one of the things I’m trying to do in asking people to look again at these 18th century paintings, some of them are Hogarth or in a well known conversation pieces, is to see them as scenes of enormous violence. And I think the fact that they’re read as polite and civilized, and read as a sort of celebration of the material culture of the 18th century, all of which is harvested in incredibly violent ways. The silks, the glass, the silver, the diamonds. You know, there’s not enough reflection, I think, in current current curatorial practice in museums and in heritage culture. As we celebrate the heritage culture of the 18th century, are we talking about the violence of that material culture? And when we see a Black child standing there, with a silver collar… one of the things your work made me think more about Cobra, which, again, we don’t want to think about it. What’s underneath the collar, you know? Are there sores underneath that collar? Sore skin underneath that collar? The violence of not being able to take that collar off that… Those kinds of paintings don’t want to show us that side and yet they are showing it as well. They’re showing whiteness as consumption. And so I think what’s so fascinating is that you show us the underbelly of what consumption is, it consumption can only be violent. These are all multiple scenes of of violence. And, you know, the other side of my work is looking at the slave captain’s journals — who captained the ships of the Middle Passage. And there’s also this journal of Nicholas Owen who lived on the west coast of Sierra Leone and traded in stolen people. And they don’t tell us… It’s more what they don’t tell us. So the ship captain’s journal is a scene of violence precisely because it doesn’t tell us what’s going on to maintain order. When John Newton — the famous slave trader who wrote “Amazing Grace” — says, you know, “I put the men in irons”. What did that mean? What did that involve? What violence… What were people’s bodies like when they came out of those irons on the other side? And also if we read John Newton’s slave ship journals, it’s a litany of death. Cobra, you talked about the sharks following… Every day, he’s throwing bodies overboard.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

The 18th and 19th century literary studies and history has a long way to go in really reckoning fully with the Enlightenment as a scene of overwhelming genocide and violence. And we’re nowhere close to that yet. But could you tell me a little bit more about your value of representing violence? You did talk about it in your talk, but maybe want to say a little bit more.

KING COBRA  

That’s one of the things that are really important for me when I’m doing artist’s lectures at schools is not being so general about some of the history. I usually try to give out, you know, a reading that’s really intense that talks really explicitly about the violence. You know, as far as like Newton… I really remember the ways he talks about torturing children. I’m not sure if it was him specifically, but there was a section of “The Slave Ship” by Marcus Rediker where it talks about a child that went on a hunger strike. They were trying to force him to eat and ended up tying like a log around his neck. And then eventually he died. And then, after that, they made his mother throw him overboard. And those are the stories that really stick with me. Because to do that to a child… it takes a certain level of evil to follow the action through and to do it over and over and over again. Slave ship captains: they were some of the most evil people that have ever existed in this world. When you think about intergenerational trauma, it goes both ways. You know, there are people that are victimized by violence. And then there are there are also people that inflict violence. And I don’t think that those desires necessarily go away. It stays in your DNA. So I think it is important for people to understand that history so that, you know, they can either avoid it — avoid the violence — or avoid, like, their own tendencies to want to do weird shit. But when you were talking about the juxtaposition of these figures, I also immediately started thinking about the ways that institutions take photos of people in departments. I was often, you know, tokenized, in photographs. They position you with, like, a cohort of other white students… There’s not much difference. And there’s also the same covering up of violence that happens outside of that photograph. And like instances of racial oppression that people experience outside of the gaze of like incoming students, I think that those kind of acts in really similar ways that is really frustrating. And I also didn’t, you know, think about those two in relationship to each other until you literally started talking about it.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

No, you’ve really made me see that. What you’ve just said, I mean, in that sense of how non-white — but I think, still, especially Black people in this country — are exhibits. And Indigenous people, too. But even when we’re in our glass studios, or the museum, or the academy or a school, and we’re trying to do this work: we and our students remain still on show for a white supremacist culture. Those are the conditions of our of the work we’re trying to do.

KING COBRA  

There’s always this… this kind of see-saw that happens between representation, invisibility, and then also being used as bait. Because it’s not that the violence ever stops existing are happening within these institutions. But more people show up and more people are exposed to violence, and there’s no solution. And that part is really frustrating. Being implicated in those scenarios visually.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

Right. You talked about “When You’re Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” you know, the shark and I was really fascinated with this. As you said, it was a terrifying sculpture and piece. And I thought, yeah, it’s terrifying. But it’s also… those portraits are terrifying. And I want people to see and, you know, so that’s just really so I think people should I look at those pieces together because that’s the terror. That’s the amount of terror that those polite people buying people and silver and glass and porcelain and silk. That’s the terror that they represent. And as you said: “what is the solution to it?” I was so interested in how you talked about consumption in your talk, Cobra, and I just wondered if you had the connections to make between how the pieces in my talk represent consumption and how you’re thinking about consumption? And the work that art does to frame different types of consumption? Or is it all just one type of consumption that’s framed differently?

KING COBRA  

That’s a hard one. It’s a hard one because there are many levels. One of the things during your talk is your emphasis on Black people’s interest and dedication towards adornment. That was something that really stuck out for me. There are things that are important to culture and that already pre-existed colonization. When you’re at the very beginnings of like human abduction… I don’t think a lot of people were associating the type of violence that was actually happening to whatever they were trading for. And, that way, I feel really differently about adornment. You know, me as a person, I’m heavily adorned. I believe that I use it as some type of defense mechanism. But, yeah, I definitely have a lot of mixed feelings about it now. Also, in terms of the things that I’ve accumulated based on selling work or modifying other people’s bodies… and then, you know, there’s a conversation about the type of work that I’m making. So I have a very different and now increasingly complicated relationship with consumption. And I think that’s changing because I am working more with white flesh. Now, I don’t really have as much of a problem with it. Yeah, I’m actually… I’m making a series for my new exhibition and it’s a series of 99 crackers. And the piece is called “How many crackers does it take?” But I love the idea that people will be able to be like, “Yeah, I bought a cracker today.” Or, you know, buy a cracker at an auction. So I think that I’m trying to make like accommodations for myself and accommodations for Black people, as far as like, ways that they feel comfortable collecting artwork or consuming artwork that it doesn’t make them feel like they’re participating in something… A type of violence that already exists.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

And that’s so, so interesting, because when whenever Western European nations started to arrive on the west coast of Africa to steal people, they were bringing in really capitalism on top of the use-value economy. So I think that’s a really… You know, we need to remember the difference between a use-value, which is, yeah, you know, people adorn… have uses for things. And adornment and custom and art and sacred objects. And, you know, kinship objects are all vital parts of culture, human culture, what Sylvia Wynter calls “sociogeny,” you know. That we evolve our being from our social, sociological and cultural environment. But what whiteness does is comes in imposing a capitalist exchange that, you know, it’s not the use of the thing, it’s the amount of profit you can make from exchanging the thing. And that’s where the evil starts to come into play. And, of course, as you say, we’re all in this economy. Why shouldn’t we try and make new economies of connection and affect and use that are not simply about extraction, for profit, for buying stuff for capital. And what really strikes me when I’m looking at the 18th-century portraits of, you know, the aristocracy or the upper gentry is that they make their humanity out of stuff that they accumulate. So that the white human which comes to stand in for the human is constituted in these 18th and 19th century modes via wealth, via capitalism. And I don’t think people really… we still are so far away from deconstructing that as a really, as you said, evil way to be in the world. Because you’re… you know, even if we think of indigenous practices, that puts us in a violent relationship to the earth and stuff and other people. But there has to be ways to adorn, to be, to express that doesn’t participate in those violences. I think that’s really fascinating.

EMILY LEACH  

So, Davin, tell me a little bit about Wet Dog Glass.

DAVIN EBANKS  

My name is Davin Ebanks, and I run the glass program at Kent State University. When I got here, I inherited something like 21 pieces of equipment. All of those are controlled by systems that Wet Dog put in place, even if it was homemade equipment. All the control systems, all the safety systems: all those are installed by Wet Dog. We have a 400 pound invested crucible furnace, color box, pipe warmer, some of our kilns are Wet Dog made pieces of equipment, but our entire facility runs on the system that Wet Dog put in place. We just switched over from our old Wet Dog furnace, which was making really good glass: bubble-free, clear. And the switchover was super easy. They made it really easy. We had to actually have them reproduce the old footprint. They were happy to do that. It was literally… It wasn’t plug and play: we had to take off our old gas train and put it onto the new furnace. But it was literally just like putting together some Legos. You just put a few things in some slots, tighten some bolts, we did a tiny amount of welding and then we pressed a button and our furnace lit up. And the biggest thing is just how efficient it is and how easy it is to tune it to get it to be efficient. And they provide really good video tutorials on how to do that. So you don’t have to be an amazing technician. All you need is literally a screwdriver and some time. Working with Eddie is… for me, it’s a joy. He’s a master diagnostician. I’ve never heard Eddie say: “well, that’s weird.” When something does go wrong, even if it is weird, he just can find the answer to that. Ten, fifteen minutes [later], he gets back and he goes: “This is a weird thing that happened, but that’s what this means. Here’s what you do.” And, I mean, I couldn’t ask for better than that, really.

EMILY LEACH  

Wet Dog Glass is your studio’s best friend. Learn more at wdg-us.com/.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

Cobra, when you are working with glass and you… What was so amazing was how you described it as sort of fleshy and amorphous and then it becomes dead. And I really… I just wanted to know if when you’re looking at types of glass that I’m showing from the 18th century — whether you see that as dead glass? As glass they’ve bought to the sort of dead state exhibiting? 

KING COBRA  

Huh! 

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

Like… the way they’ve used glass is so very, very different to how you’ve used glass. 

KING COBRA  

I mean, that’s, that’s really complicated, because European glass… it does feel dead, and it does feel cold. And it feels lifeless… like it doesn’t have a pulse. As a glass practitioner, or like a student, I was always really confused about some of the structure in, you know, the classes. The things out we teach are the things that we are kind of, like encouraged to learn is also, like, through a lens of whiteness and what is celebrated in white cultures or European culture. And that was something that I had always had a problem with because… in my mind, I’m like, “Well, you consume this type of glass so much, I can just buy it somewhere. Why am I spending $1,000 trying to remake it in school?” I’m much more interested in, you know, bulbous shapes… You know, things with color. Things that remind me of myself, or like, how I positioned myself in my body. Or like, how I feel about materials and shapes. But yeah, European glass has always felt funerary for me. Hmm… Like a facade? That is always about to break. Yeah, that’s a that’s a really great question and something that I think I have to jot down and further dissect because I never thought about, like, the ways that I was perceiving glass and different parts of the world. As far as, like, death is concerned.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

But, you know, it was your commentary on amorphous sort of molten glass that made me think of that, because I think you’re absolutely right to pick up on the funerary sort of uses of glass in the 18th century. Once they made lead glass, they can engrave it. And they use that engraving tool to really do a lot of commemoration or celebration of Empire. So there are lots of glasses — sets of glasses — with enslaved people engraved onto them and sort of depicting the plantation as an Edenic site. And it’s… hard to think of a more deathly object than a lead crystal glass, you know, from Holland or England, somehow commemorating or celebrating the plantation and the genocide of slavery. So I think that was your talk, and yet, you know, then your use of glass makes it look like such a different material. Like it is still flowing, like it maybe could be part of a body, you know, and not the sort of distance. And you’re right, it is so connected to… The 18th century can easily be characterized as creating a facade about itself, you know, even the buildings, the neoclassical styles, which are really they’re fake. And they dig up the landscaping, they develop, they make hills where there should be hills, or they make lakes where there should be lakes and the grid houses, you know, the National Trust. It’s all about creating this facade. You’re absolutely right.

KING COBRA  

Yeah, I also think about maybe the presence of glass in the medical industry as well. And ways that it seems — like in terms of how medicine is concerned — a lot of white people have used glass to preserve body parts to put them on display, which is very different from the African diaspora where a lot of things are dried, kept in dark places, not necessarily like about exploitation in that way. So I also think about the ways that  the medical industry has like employed glass as also being like a form of exploitation.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

Absolutely, and you’re making me think of um… George Cuvier’s experimentation on the body of Sarah Baartman and how she was displayed in Paris. And finally, she has been brought back and buried in South Africa. But this idea that displaying to that degree is somehow creating rational knowledge… It’s so twisted, again, in what’s presented as enlightenment scientific knowledge is predicated on enormous violence. And again, I think, you know, something like your neoplasm piece, again, turns that logic and that myth inside out because it’s showing another side of what they’d like to sort of put in a cold jar.

KING COBRA  

How would you define the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment? You know, what are some key philosophies and ideas that continue to inform the way that we perceive the world today?

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

I mean, one of my missions in the work I’m trying to do is to undo how the Enlightenment presented itself and is thought of. So in many ways, I think we need an anti-Enlightenment perspective because, I think, a lot of what’s presented as representin some of the words we would associate with the Enlightenment — reason, knowledge, information — but also some sense of moral progression, a sort of balance between harvesting from the earth and living in comfort… It’s almost like the pinnacle of a sense of “manifest destiny” where white people have reached a pinnacle of being able to take what they need from the Eart and live the life that they have always been supposed to live. And that spans out to the arts, as well as to science. So I think when we’re looking at those portraits of the Enlightenment period, we’re seeing a moment —certainly in British culture but it’s European culture too and France — of a culture that’s very pleased with itself. That thinks it has attained some sense of a pinnacle. And of course, all of those words have a teleology or progression.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

What we’re aware of then is the opposite side of that is Africa, is Blackness, is Indigenous savagery. And so I think really what a lot of my work is to undo those assertions because they’re very much still present in the education system altogether. We can just even think of standardized testing to begin with as an incredibly ableist, incredibly classist and racist — but supposedly an objective tool. That’s another Enlightenment word that measures students and children’s progression. So I think these Enlightenment modes of measuring, quantifying, and assuming knowledge — while they’re actually erasing knowledge. So, like you said, Cobra: all the knowledge and cultures and peoples and languages… You know, that was one thing. When people were put on those slave ships, they deliberately jumbled people up so that they couldn’t communicate so you lose linguistic cultures. You know, Grace Nichols has a beautiful poem, she says, “I have crossed an ocean / I have lost my tongue / from the root of the old one / a new one that has sprung.” And so this idea of tongues being lost… but it’s also she gets to the violence of almost having your tongue cut out. Anyway, so the idea that Enlightenment is the time when knowledge is created, the other side of that is, it’s time when — through Indigenous genocide, the East India Company, and the Royal African company — cultures are being decimated. So, you know, it’s that making sure that we understand what’s at stake. And I just wonder what you feel about that question of legacies of Enlightenment remain that need to be answered or responded back to in what you’re working through.

KING COBRA  

I think a lot about the violent action of wiping something clean. I think, you know, it all goes back to memory and ways that we take away people’s power to archive things that have happened. I think, ultimately, long term, it’s a genius plan for brainwashing. I don’t know… in a lot of ways… I’m gonna get kind of Hotep-y a little bit, because I think about colonization also in terms of like alien invasion. And, you know, what it looks like to successfully destroy a planet. There’s not a lot that I can separate from the ways that white people have colonized the world and the violence that they continue to inflict on people that do not look like them with a type of successful alien invasion. And that’s how I feel about it. [laughing]

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

Now that we know that Homo sapiens is born in Africa, you know, when the Enlightenment period was determined to insist that the white man was the normal humans from which others are descended, and in fact, they’re just completely making that up… 

KING COBRA  

Right. And then I also feel like, you know, when we’re talking about the Middle Passage, we have to talk about disease, and a lot of the cultural practices that have perpetuated plagues or the places that plagues thrive. And that’s a whole other situation where I think, you know, you’re kind of coming equipped with methods of biological warfare. And… it’s hard to, you know, not talk about it because it’s just right in front of our faces, not only in the past, but even in present day. You know, thinking about being a New Yorker, living in the age of multiple pandemics at once, and even a reboot of syphilis? You know, I just have a very different type of relationship with disease and virus and a type of consistent fear that eventually, you can’t really pay attention to too much. And I think that’s also about, it brings back the idea of wiping something clean. You know, even thinking in terms of, like, how many people have died from COVID. I think it’s really hard for people to equate those numbers to actual human beings and ways that it’s very disproportionate to who’s dying and when, and how… Yeah, I don’t really know how to wrap that part up. But all in all, to say: it’s very disturbing. It’s very disturbing. And I’m really bothered by the fact that a lot of this history that has never even been taught to full extent is being, you know, forced out of academia. Because we haven’t even really gotten a chance to really reflect on what has happened and the repercussions of those things. In general, I’m trying to figure out all this in real time as well.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

So, Cobra, could you talk to us a little bit about the tools and skills and resources that you find within your experience of neurodivergence that make you exceptional in the glass studio? Or that sort of bring the specific qualities that are helping you define your work?

KING COBRA  

I will say… I don’t know if it makes me exceptional. Like, you know… I’ve just never really been that “glassy glassy” technical person. I’ve always, you know, kind of made things work for me. Hmm, it’s weird. I think that the ways that I observe people and the way that they do things, and the way that they interact with materials and other people, you know, it just informs the ways that I want my audience affected by looking at my work. But I don’t know if… I’m having a hard time, you know, and not that I’m not an exceptional person! But I don’t know if being neurodivergent helps me be better as a glass person. It probably makes me a little bit worse, just because I’m distracted by so many things. You know, last time, we talked about the blow pipes being disgusting and the block water. And now, when we’re even talking about like cleanliness and virus and bacteria thriving in specific cultures, you know… It’s just… it’s too much to think about all at once. So I think that in that scenario, being neurodivergent is not necessarily a positive. It’s there, but I don’t know, I mean… I think maybe it’s a little bit different for people that are really focused on like, perfecting moves and routines in the studio. But those types of heart expectations around, you know, high temperatures, and screaming and loud music, and you know, glass, like, exploding out of buckets, has always just like kept me on the edge of my seat in ways that you know, I have… I have been able to relax in my studio where I haven’t been able to relax in the glass studio.

KING COBRA  

Kerry, so what is it like to learn about contemporary glass? And what is your material relationship to glass? Have you ever blown glass? 

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

No… I was saying to Emily before we began talking. I mean, it’s one of the things that… When you describe both the fascination and danger: that really chimed with me. Because I think you know, when I realized that’s how you make glass, I was horrified that it involves such danger and such heat. And, you know, so many risks. So I have never blown glass. And I really would have thought I had actually no relationship. In fact, when I was… the very beginning of this whole research stream was thinking about tiny objects of the glass beads. Because in the journals of the enslavers they’re talk… You know, Snellgrave talks about just exchanging these beads, that meant nothing. And, you know, as one learns more, I began to question that. That’s the white man’s view of what those cultural objects meant. That’s an a capitalist putting a value on people and beads at the same time. So it was really with the tiny objects of beads, and then beginning to research and knowing that a few people were doing some research, but not that many, on the history of making glass beads within different African nations at the time. Again, there’s so much more work that needs to be done there. And again, just the very different type of glass. So, a lot of that Ghanaian aggry beads are textured and opaque. So again, you’ve got different cultural systems in place. Whereas, at this point, the 18th-century is is pricing transparency, lucency, and what they would call delicacy, and then you start being aware of all these words that create value not just for cultural artifacts but for people and for cultures. And so that was really what started me off. And then, you know, I often teach it Olaudah Equiano’s “Interesting Narrative” because it’s one of the few firsthand accounts we have of the Middle Passage. And I noticed, you know, the first thing he does with the tiny bit of money he makes, even while enslaved, is to buy a glass. And he then sells that glass for double its price. And so it’s actually through… Glass becomes his route to making some money to get out of slavery. And that became quite fascinating. So that was really the way into it. I hadn’t thought about glass in the contemporary world. And so then, to now come and learn about your work and the work of other artists who who are we still using glass, or have used glass, as a medium to tell this history is just utterly fascinating for me and a complete education. My relationship to the materiality of glasses has changed. I see it as a cunning material, you know, a deceptive material. Because it has this association with knowledge, you know, with Enlightenment knowledge, with delicacy, and I think that’s, that’s not the full story at all.

KING COBRA  

Yeah, there’s also this weird hierarchy that exists within, like, institutions that have glass programs, too. That I find, like, you know, across the country. But distaste for glass beads or like making glass beads. And so, you know, when you talk about them being traded for people with a desire to, like, adorn your body or adorn, like, you know, people in your family and things, it goes back to this whole wiping of history where it’s like, “Oh, no. We don’t do this in school. Like, this is for old ladies. You know, these are for crafty people. We look down on people like that.” But it’s like a continuation of a wiping of history that, you know, is really important concerning how everyone, everybody is even here right now.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

Absolutely. That’s so interesting that… I didn’t know that that was the the sort of a culture in glassmaking today that we’re making beads was looked down upon. That’s so interesting. And I think you’re absolutely right to connect it to that long history.

KING COBRA  

Yeah, it’s totally weird. It’s totally weird, because black glass beads are cool.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

Totally. [laughs]

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

You know, so much of what you’ve talked about in your podcast, and here and in your talk, are about your own experience as an artist. So what would you say to young artists today, especially anybody who might have a lack of belief in their work? Or might think, “Oh, I’m not good enough,” you know, this, these equations of skill, again, that are from the Enlightenment? What advice would you have for young creators?

KING COBRA  

I have, like, two ways to answer this question. And one is, if you believe your work is not good enough, then it’s not. And it’s not going to be until you believe that it is. You have to convince yourself before you convince anybody else. And I think that, you know, since you’re investing money and time into making these things, it’s important for you to believe in it. So that’s one way. And another way is, you know, a lot of times students are listening to lots of voices: advisors, teachers, friends, sometimes weird family members. But I feel like until you are making the work that you truly want to make, you’ll always just be kind of stumbling. And I think in order to make the work that you truly want to make. It takes a lot of like solitude. Being honest with yourself. Journaling. Really figuring out how you actually feel about things, rather than just like birthing objects into the world that take up space. Lots and lots of introspection. I think, for me, I was always interested in the same things, but did have a lot of fear about, you know, if people would see value in it or want to purchase it. And for a while, I think that I was going a little bit easy on people visually. And now that I’ve really defined what is visually engaging for me after, you know, doing so many shows, or exhibitions or whatever, it’s like, “Oh, I know now that there’s an audience of people that look for me, and they look for the type of work that I make because they think the same ways. And they are inspired to make objects in the same way.” The way that I approach art now is that I’m making… I’m making work for the people that I get it. And a lot of people won’t get it. But for the people that do, especially for students, you know, they’re just going to go even harder. And so in that way, I try to make sure that, you know, I’m still putting out work to get people to dissect my work, and dissect the other work that they see out in the world to understand how they feel about what they create. At the same time not, like, letting it destroy me or taking too much of me. Because if you’re just living and working for other people then you have nothing left for yourself. So those are just some of the things that I think about when I’m making work now. But yeah, if you don’t… If you feel like your work is not good enough. It’s not. And it won’t be until you think it’s good enough.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

That’s an amazing insight for people to think of. And just to to have that grittiness, I think, because none of us are working in perfect environments. So we’re gonna have to find our paths through them.

KING COBRA  

Yeah, I think it’s also about, you know, understanding failure, too. Because a lot of times of, you know, when you do fail there, there are things that can be like, salvaged from that wreckage and repurposed for something new. And so I think, you know, with each concept… With each conceptual failure. [laughing] There, you know, there’s something that can be added later, or like maybe something that you didn’t understand in the moment, but through time, you know, it developed or maybe you had an experience that like informed that idea. So I think that even as you build work as an artist, like as a young artist, just keep a record of everything because most likely — and I’m living this right now 10 years down the line — you know, it’ll be the most amazing piece ever.

EMILY LEACH  

Stay tuned for some closing thoughts from Cobra and Kerry. To learn more about our speakers, follow King Cobra @the_silicon_don and @flesh_and_fluid on instagram. You can read some of Dr. Kerry Sinanan’s work in “In Sparkling Company,” available via the Corning Museum of Glass, and on the 18th-Century Common website. We’ll have links in the show notes.  The GEEX Talks Q&A is produced by Emily Leach (that’s me!) and Ben Orozco. Our theme is “Refraction” by Podington Bear, with additional music from Otis McDonald. A huge thank you to the GEEX Talks Subscribers for your continued support and engagement! Your questions shaped this conversation. They’re available on the show notes on our website, where you can listen to previous episodes and all three seasons of the GEEX Talks lecture series. Share your questions for featured speakers by emailing questions@geex.glass. Learn more about subscribing to GEEX talks on our website: geex.glass/support. If you haven’t subscribed to GEEX Talks yet, there’s a three-month public access period — visit the GEEX Glass YouTube channel to listen and enjoy King Cobra and Dr. Kerry Sinanan’s lectures before they’re archived on April 10 and April 23, 2023. We have a shop where you can purchase merch inspired by GEEX Talks lectures. Proceeds support speakers and our public programming. Thanks to our sponsors for this episode! In business since 1996, Wet Dog Glass delivers unsurpassed value and turnkey hot glass studio equipment, studio planning and consultation, and technical support. Wet Dog Glass: your studio’s best friend. Learn more at wdg-us.com. Based in Pennsylvania, Vetro Vero offers limited production blown glass vessels, hand-formed contemporary goblets, and original sculptures. Vetro Vero: leaders in contemporary blown glass design since 2011. Visit their website at vetrovero.com. The GEEX Talks Q&A Podcast is supported by a Craft Research Fund grant from the Center for Craft. The Craft Research Fund is a visionary program dedicated to supporting scholarly craft research in United States. Center for Craft supports academic and artist researchers, independent scholars, curators, and graduate students writing, revising, and reclaiming the history of craft. Thanks so much for helping GEEX offer more histories and establish new legacies in the field of glass. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the GEEX Talks Q&A Podcast and share with a friend. For updates on GEEX, sign up for our newsletter! You can also follow us @geexglass on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

DR. KERRY SINANAN  

I don’t think I’ll ever have final thoughts about all this. I think this is gonna… it’s just going to keep going. No, I’m just so grateful. Thanks for talking, Cobra. I’m just… This has been amazing for me. Thank you.

KING COBRA  

Yes, thank you. I mean, I’m just really appreciative of being able to share space. And also like, hear you reference a lot of the things that I also research. So it made me feel like “Oh, somebody gets it. You know? We’re on the same team.” Like we’re interested in the same thing. So, yeah, I feel like a very special audience member.

EMILY LEACH  

Thanks so much to Cobra and Kerry. I’m really grateful to be able to connect the two of you and share this conversation with our listeners. Speaking for myself, this was such a fascinating and exciting discussion. Coming in May 2023: “Reframing Antiquity: Ways of Knowing and Being” featuring Raghvi Bhatia and Dr. Marvin Bolt.

BACK TO PODCAST PLAYER

Selected questions from the audience:

• REMEMBERING: Can you talk about memory? Through your work, what does it mean to learn, think with, and remember the Middle Passage?
• VIOLENCE: We received a few questions about the representation (or glorification) of violence. One of the key links between your talks is an insistence on perceiving and remembering historic and ongoing violence. With that in mind, what is the value of creating representations of and critically engaging with violence?
• HISTORY: How do you look at, consider, or perceive representations of glass (or consumption) from the 18th to 19th-century? How does this impact your perception of objectivity and the framing of history?
• LUMINOSITY: How would you define the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment? What are some key philosophies and ideas that continue to inform how we perceive the world today?
• PANDEMIC: Can you talk more about disease relative to your work? Thinking about the visibility of disease, both historic and ongoing, and the cultural differences that can perpetuate and foster infectious disease.
• STRENGTHS: What tools and skills and resources have you found within your neurodivergence that make you exceptional in the glass studio?
• WHY GLASS?: What is it like to learn about contemporary glass or glass-adjacent art practices? What is your material relationship to glass?
• GUIDANCE: What would you say to young artists who don’t believe in their work and don’t believe they are good enough?

Thanks to educators and learners from Urban Glass and Hastings College for sharing questions! Learn how to become a Subscriber here.

Theme music by Poddington Bear. Additional music in this episode by Otis McDonald.

Edited and produced by Emily Leach and Ben Orozco.