“Vile and Clamorous Reports” was shown at Hesse Flatow Gallery in NYC in Nov/Dec 2021 as part of the group show “AFFECTIVE HISTORIES,” featuring work by Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez, Cate O’Connell Richards, Kelsey Tynik, Julia Rooney, S. Erin Batiste & Christina P. Day.
The violence of the Salem witch trials was intimately intertwined with settler colonial violence in complicated ways. “Vile and Clamorous Reports” uses found language and juxtaposition to expose the horror of this knotted relationship.
The black text is composed of citations from Andrew Ferris’ scholarly article ‘Vile and Clamorous Reports’ from New England: Specter of Indigenous Conspiracy in Early Plymouth (2019), which tracks the role of paranoia and conspiracy thinking in colonists attitudes toward Indigenous North Americans. The red text contains every sentence in which the words “the black man”—which was how colonists described the devil—and “Indian” appear in the Salem witch trials court records. For 17th century English colonizers, the word “black” was an umbrella category that included Indigenous people.
“Vile and Clamorous Reports” consists of 8 polymer plate broadsides and a sound installation. Walking down a hallway, gallery goers could hear the red text coming from four speakers, voices whispering and overlapping, giving the impression of gossip.