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Why are white people indifferent to funk music?

Adrian Margaret Smith Piper is a conceptual and political artist whose work over three decades has revolved around aspects of racism, xenophobia, gender and class. The artist’s opposition to a homogenous and patriarchal culture manifested itself for instance in the early 70s through direct actions, whereby she manipulated her appearance and behaviour in order to question convention and generally accepted norms in the public space.

At Kino Svetozor, Index will, amongst others, screen the artist’s noted Funk Lessons: a videotape piece based on Adrian Piper’s audience-interactive performance at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1983. The video, edited and directed by Sam Samore and produced by Tom Oden, aswell as the performance itself, goes somewhat beyond the notion of performance, addressing an ambiguous status of African-American working class music and dance as serious contributors to American art and culture. In the performance Adrian Piper teaches the audience how to listen to this music, and gives directions of how to
dance to it.