Dr. Taryn Jordan: Exploring The Archive of Soul in Paul Steven Benjamin’s Black is the Color

This paper stages a critical convergence between W.E.B. Du Bois and Michel Foucualt through a discussion of soul [another word for black collective feeling]. I pair these two thinkers together to consider what Du Bois names “a peculiar sense,” an aspect of double consciousness of the black’s soul in Paul Steven Benjamin’s 2016 installation Black Is the Color. Benjamin’s 2016 video installation Black Is the Color is made of forty-one CRT televisions stacked in one row of eight televisions on top of three rows of ten televisions. Each screen repeats part of Nina Simone’s song, “Black Is the Color of my True Love’s Hair,” at slightly different frequencies. Considering Du Bois and Foucault’s thinking on soul I ask: how does Paul Stephen Benjamin’s Black Is the Color materialize “peculiar sense?” Ultimately, “peculiar sense” emerges from the combination of Simone’s repeating flickering image and the differing frequencies of sound which produce a sensory experience akin to eeriness. This peculiar sensation functions as a counter archive of black history that cannot be read, translated or copied, only sensed.