Dread Scott’s On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide: Performance, Photography, and Reimagining History

Two photographs capture the artist Dread Scott in his attempt to walk against a jet of water. Scott's feat appears to require tremendous effort. He grimaces from the effort to keep his head up, breathe and push through the water's blast. He leans forward holding one arm protectively in front of him to blunt the force of the water. His hair is flung backward as water ricochets off his drenched body. In one photograph, a distant crowd watches as Scott raises his hands defiantly in the gesture of "Hands up, don't shoot," familiar from protests against police killings of black men, women and children occurring around the same time in Ferguson, Missouri, New York City, in cities across the country, and on social media. The two photographs of Scott, titled performance stills, represent Scott's October 7, 2014 performance, On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide, presented on Water Street beneath the Manhattan Bridge in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn.' They recall 1963 photographs of civil rights activists blasted with water by firefighters in Birmingham, Alabama. Why would Scott subject himself to such brutality? Why recreate such well-known scenes of police violence against peaceful black demonstrators?