Uwa Iduozee On Intersections Between Race & Technology

Uwa Iduozee, a Finnish-Nigerian documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Helsinki and New York City is the Finnish Fine Arts Academy’s and Saastamoinen Foundation’s current artist-in-residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP). During his residency, Iduozee works on a video installation exploring the connection between modern algorithms and racialization, focusing on how emerging technologies are used to reinforce white supremacy and deepen social inequality. FCINY’s Isabelle Rosse recently (virtually) sat down with Iduozee to discuss his creative processes & how living in both New York City & Helsinki play into his work. Their full conversation follows below,

At this point, it’s been about a month since your residency began and much has happened in that short time. From the attack on the Capitol to the inauguration, have these events impacted your work?

Starting my residency in the middle of the Capitol attack and its aftermath was definitely challenging. It laid bare the double standards and the violence of this country and forced me to confront some of the feelings I have been experiencing throughout the past year. It definitely ate up a lot of my mental energy, but I don’t feel like it directly impacted the way in which I’m approaching my work. In my new project I’m more concerned about exploring the interplay of race and technology, and while these recent events are undeniably linked to this theme on many levels, I see them more as a continuation of, rather than a fundamental shift within the structures I’m exploring.

You’re based in both New York City & Helsinki. How does each of these cities play into your work?

Living in New York for the past few years has enabled me to distance myself from Finland in a way that has helped me to not only better reflect on my own experiences of growing up in Helsinki, but it has also provided a new lens for looking at the structures and traditions of Finnish society as a whole. This has made me more appreciative of what I might have to offer through my work and my unique perspective, and has directly influenced the projects that I have planned for the future in Finland.

At the same time my background in Helsinki informs the way I approach my work in the US, and gives me a different way of looking at things here, while still being fully aware that despite being influenced by American culture my whole life and now having lived here for a few years, I still lack a thorough understanding of the cultural specificities of America. This has somehow become more apparent the longer I’ve been here, as some of the superficial understandings of America I might have held prior to coming here have been exposed, forcing me to constantly question my position in interpreting the black experiences here.

You’ve said that you try to expand the ways in which we understand blackness by challenging the traditional framework of its visual representation. Can you explore this idea more?

The experience and the concept of blackness is inextricably linked to the history of any visual medium. The way in which we understand blackness has been largely conveyed through visual representations, and the experience of what it is to be black has been and is shaped through the surveillance of black bodies. Historically these tools, and thus the resulting narratives, have been controlled by white people, and the results of this can be plainly observed in the plethora of negative stereotypes, the exoticising of blackness and the disenfranchisement of black communities around the world.

Challenging the ways in which these portrayals are perpetuated requires not only an awareness of this history and its effects, but also understanding how this past converses not only with the present, but with our (dis)ability to envision a future outside of this framework. In my own work, I approach this simply by creating visual stories that offer a more multi-layered depiction of the black experience, as well as looking at ways to deconstruct the stories and the histories that we tell ourselves as a society. My current project leans more on the latter approach, where I’m exploring the historical intersections between technology and race, specifically in terms of how the evolution of surveillance technology informs the ways in which we interpret blackness today and how this can be used to look at current technologies.

How does your current video installation project explore the links between modern algorithms and racialization?

My goal with this project is to problematize the techno-optimistic myth that the “objective” technologies of tomorrow will somehow inevitably lead to an equitable, color-blind utopian society by supposedly ridding us of human bias. In reality, the algorithms behind these tools are a reflection of the data they are learning from, and as such often actively replicate and intensify the racial hierarchies they are supposedly dismantling.

As I’ve done more research during my residency, I’ve narrowed down my focus to the realm of surveillance as technology - specifically on how the history of surveillance informs us on the interplay between blackness and technology, and how we might use this knowledge to understand how the use of technology is linked to white supremacist power structures. Technology exists outside of the intentions and objectives of its creation, and without actively engaging with the problems inherent in the production and applications of emerging technologies we are in danger of hard-coding certain methods of racial and social control into the systems we are creating.

As far as the video installation itself, I’m currently building sets inside of the studio that has been provided to me through the residency. I’ll be filming different scenarios that play with this idea of the history of surveilling black bodies interspersing with and informing the ways in which we use current digital tools. The installation will be a multi-channel projection, further highlighting the non-linearity of surveillance as a technology where its future is inseparable from it’s past and vice versa. 

Finally, what’s inspiring you right now?

1. The Afrofuturist Podcast by Ahmed Best

2. The people in my Zoom book club

3. Ikorodu Bois’s Instagram account

 Uwa Iduozee’s interview took place in February, 2021, virtually in Brooklyn, NY.

Iduozee’s work will next be seen at the inaugural Helsinki Biennial opening in June 2021. The Biennial will present 40 international artists or groups of artists from both Finland and around the world. The artists have been invited to create new site-specific and temporary artworks or to exhibit existing artworks that will engage in a dialogue with the Biennial site, the island of Vallisaari in front of Helsinki.

To learn more about Uwa Iduozee’s practice, visit his website: www.uwaiduozee.com and read an introduction to his residency at ISCP.

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