ON LINGO OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC
In an age where digital proximity often eclipses physical distance, Lingo of the Black Atlantic; a collaborative project between visual practitioners Ibekwe and Dakin explores the fertile space of Black online existence. Formed through a cyber relationship, their work interrogates the aesthetics, language, and cultural legacies that persist and evolve within digital spheres. Their project offers a conceptual and visual investigation into a post-modern diasporic visual language. The communicators posit that Black digital expression is neither fragmented nor rootless, but deeply intertextual, inherently poetic, and semiotically rich. At its core, the project functions as a visual library; a living archive of images drawn from Black cultural references. Though the images appear randomly assorted, their juxtaposition generates unexpected dialogues. Each click of the shuffle button becomes a curatorial act, a prompt for users to generate their own narrative, what the duo call a kind of digital poetry. This interface resists linear storytelling in favor of associative meaning-making, mirroring the way diasporic memory and culture often operate through symbolic accumulation. The project name Lingo of the Black Atlantic nods to Paul Gilroy's seminal The Black Atlantic, but extends it into the digital realm. Ibekwe and Dakin suggest that there exists a visual dialect unique to the Black diaspora: an aesthetic grammar shaped by shared histories of displacement, resistance, and joy. They argue that this lingo is encoded in images that, even when dislocated from context, retain a charge of meaning through their relation to the Black body and its visual history. What emerges is a form of speculative semiotics, an evolving system of signs shaped by historical memory and present-day screen culture. They hypothesise that meaning is not imposed upon the archive, but rather emerges organically through the act of interaction. Any image, when placed in relation to another, becomes a reflector or node of significance, precisely because of the cultural weight carried within Black visuality. Ultimately, Lingo of the Black Atlantic is less a finished artwork than an evolving thought experiment. It resists the fixity of conclusions, instead offering a platform for ongoing inquiry. It is a quiet but profound testament to the enduring magnetism of diasporic culture.
Jasmine Dover