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Tongues Untied (1989)

“Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act.”

In one of the best “short films” (spanning just 5 minutes under the category “feature film”) I have maybe ever seen, filmmaker Marlon Riggs bears his soul in the exploration what Black male homosexuality means in 1980s America and, more importantly, what that identity it means to him. The format of this film is something that I have not witnessed in a very long time. The pace, writing, the cinematography, and the narration work in perfect harmony to create what feels like an anthology poetry book. 

Tongues Untied (1989) is a series of art pieces set around the premise that Black Homosexuality is something revolutionary. It is in this way that it relates itself to our reading by Senthorun Raj; Grindring Bodies: Racial and Affective Economies of Online Queer Desire. While the film does not relate at all to the latter implication of the title (Online* Queer Desire) it does touch on the beginning observations about Black Queer sexuality in the modern age. In the first couple of pages Raj dissects whiteness and comes to the conclusion that , “…Whiteness, then, is an inherited system of privileges (Han 2006: 3)”. No one featured in Riggs’ film is white, this is a film exclusively about the Black Male same-sex attraction experience, meaning, this is a kind of love that is not “allowed” by said inherited system of privileges; it is in fact looked down upon even as late as the era of 1990s New Queer Cinema in America. The second part of that is that, again, Marlon is exploring Homosexuality and Queerness which is; “Sex that does not conform to this social imaginary is normalised as dangerous to the health and wellbeing of society”. In the case of all of these Riggs’ filmic thesis is proven to be true, Black Men loving Black Men is, indeed, a revolutionary act.

#Marlon Riggs #Tongues Untied

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"What conservatives are very adept at, and very insightful about -- in ways that people at the center of America and on the left still don't quite get a handle on -- is how culture, not simply government and business and the law, is critical to control. Patterns of representation, ways of either including or excluding, silencing and erasing different communities and their stories, their narratives. Whether it's in the academy or on television or through the National Endowment for the Arts." - Marlon Riggs, 1992, Black Gay Filmmaker & Artist, interview in New York Times

#Marlon Riggs

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Tongues Untied (1989), Marlon Riggs

#tongues untied #marlon riggs

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Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, 1989)

#tongues Untied #marlon riggs

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TONGUES UNITED (1990) dir. MARLON RIGGS

#tongues untied #marlon riggs

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ETHNIC NOTIONS (1986) dir. MARLON RIGGS

#ethnic notions #marlon riggs

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THE ART OF BONSAI

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Orbital map depicting each and every celestial body in our solar system

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Manueline Cistern, El Jadida, Morocco

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Tsumago-juku.

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札幌もやっと桜の季節🌸

鳥塩ラーメンと卵かけご飯セット😋

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Four of Six plates on a Sami i.e. Laplander Runic Calendar. The Calendar is carved in reindeer horn. Eiríkr Magnússon suggests a date between 1230 – 1391 CE for the prototype of this particular calendar.

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“Wine jar with

fan-shaped leaf designs, Yuan dynasty, 1271-1368, Cizhou stoneware with underglaze painted designs. Excavated in 1963 at Shi'erliancheng, Zhunge'erqi, Ordos City.”

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“Glazed Cizhou-type stoneware wine jar with Phagspa inscription, Yuan dynasty, dateable to

1269-1368, North China.”

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“Stoneware Jar

This Yuan-dynasty wine jar was manufactured in northern China and is decorated with a phoenix and peony pattern. Following the tradition of the Cizhou kilns in Hebei, the vessel was first covered with a white slip layer; then the design was carved out, revealing the darker clay body underneath, finally the vessel was dipped in a clear glaze and fired. In 1958 this jar was one of the first to be discovered in the ruins of a Yuan city in Tuchengzi near Jin-ing. saty miles west of Hohhot.”

From: “Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire” 2002.

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Scalloped-Rim Dish with Cranes and Clouds

China, Yuan dynasty (1279–1368)

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Bronze statue, 1200s-1300s, Tibet.