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GRAYFACE (2010)
a performance-installation by
seth and heather warren-crow​

warren-crow+warren-crow’s Grayface deals with the multiple meanings of Al Jolson’s infamous phrase “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” included in his blackface vaudeville act and later featured in the films A Plantation Act (1926) and The Jazz Singer (1927). “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet” references not only Jolson’s charismatic performance persona, but also the power of the sonic-cinematic apparatus, itself.  Indeed, the phrase is central to the mythology surrounding The Jazz Singer, often erroneously identified as the first Talkie.  Its combination of syllables moves through time with a vigorous energy, animating various histories (of film, of stage performance, of cultural appropriation, of racism) and inhabiting various bodies (Al Jolson, the actors who played him in biopics, and the performers of Grayface).  “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet” still haunts our cultural imaginations and promises to amaze us with an unattainable sonic power. However, the dogged repetition of the phrase in Grayface and the failure of the participants to perform it "correctly" denatures it, renders it pathetic, strange, as if the phrase were using all of its historical vitality to hit its head against a wall over and over and over again. In its obsessive staging of failure and use of video clips taken from YouTube, Grayface also confronts the failure of American culture to expunge painful racist imagery, which continues to circulate on the Internet.
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Grayface premiered in the group show Non-Cochlear Sound at Diapason Gallery of sound art in Brooklyn, NY. The show was curated by Seth Kim-Cohen.