‘No Pigs in Paradise’: Speculative Materialism in the Spirit of Black Constellation

In this article, I study the contemporary multimedia arts collective Black Constellation. I analyze how these cultural producers place creative and political collaboration as a form of solidarity, and how such solidarity necessarily means the recognition of discrepancy and difference as an inherent strength in creating forms of radical kinship. This kinship model is one that I name the “Black Brown Indigenous Subaltern Alien,” a kind of refrain that puts into view the ways these various bodies inhabit alterity and minoritarian subjectivity without separation or annexing. I name this kind of visionary work “speculative materialism,” insofar as it theorizes relation and connectivity amongst different historical subjectivities and material conditions. Given that the project of liberal modernity has taken up the work of classification, differentiation, and taxonomizing in the name of upholding structures of statist and majoritarian power, most especially white supremacy, I am especially drawn to the Constellation’s ability to maintain commitment to bridging respective and distinct histories for its future vision. “Our past is the western world’s future.” – Maikoyo Alley-Barnes YOUR FEAST HAS ENDED In the summer of 2014, Black Constellation was cemented as a creative force of the global underground, when three of its artists put on a major exhibition at the Frye Art Museum in the First Hill neighborhood of Seattle. The artists included Black Seattle-based artist, filmmaker, writer, and designer Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes; Punjabi-Sikh Toronto-based, sculptor, painter, and clothing designer Nep Sidhu; and indigenous Tlingit Alaska-based conceptual artist Nicholas Galanin. Their exhibition was titled YOUR FEAST HAS ENDED, with the earlier longer title, “O YE PARASITES, YOUR FEAST HAS ENDED.” This exhibition included critically-lauded hip hop duo Shabazz Palaces through a collaboration with the visual artists, where they added a one-day, four-hour long sonic sculpture titled “Expanding the Now: The Continual Line.” Having formed in 2010, Black Constellation is comprised of many artists working in [1]