PLAN B A GATHERING OF STRANGERS (OR) THIS IS NOT WORKING’ by Goldendean
“The book is a handbook for all who have a desire to understand the encasement of the white identity, for those who want to destroy the white identity, for those who love performance art, crave safe spaces, believe in community healing and enjoy personal reflections in an academic text. An extremely personal work; this is Goldendean and Dean Hutton presented in a bound format.”
Marcia Elizabeth, Bubblegumclub
Goldendean – Queer love, Queer dissidence and the undoing of whiteness
“They ask, “What are the responsibilities of white people? Our bodies as white colonial settler bodies? We forget that many of us were kind of shipped off on this colonial conquest to lead the violence against black, brown indigenous bodies and that has left wounds and triggers very much active in our everyday interactions with people and I think it is something that particularly came to light in the student movement. Where literally white bodies became triggers and reminders of the everyday violence of settler colonialism. It is trying to understand who we are beyond our own preconceptions of guilt or these kinds of burdens that we rightfully carry as people existing on stolen land and asking, what is the price of the space we take up in these conversations?”
Marcia Elizabeth, Bubblegumclub
‘F**k White People’ artwork not hate speech, court rules
“The controversial “F**k White People” artwork displayed in the South African National Gallery is not hate speech, the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court has ruled.”
The court compared the work by genderqueer artist Dean Hutton to the messages of struggle expressed by ANC liberation stalwarts like Albert Luthuli and Nelson Mandela, the Cape Party said in a statement.
James de Villiers, News24
It found that the words “white” and “people” were not directed at all white people, but rather at a general system of oppression inherent in “white domination”, and had ruled that the display could, therefore, not be seen as discrimination against all white people.
Creative Womxn: Dean Hutton on using love to disrupt, starting with the self
“I’m asking for a translation of one thing into another pain. And it’s not about equalising it. It’s asking you to translate the possible feeling of what it feels like and to not cause that. It’s just asking for a bit more responsibility on an individual scale and the thing is that we have to start looking at these things in different communities. Because we’re rushed in the way that we constantly have to live and survive capitalism, we don’t have time to take that time with people, and people are just asking for time.
Gabriella Pinto, 10and5.com
It’s a kind of human kindness that we’ve forgotten in the rush, because those things take time and they ask more of us as individuals, and I am definitely no poster girl for genderqueer, but it’s something that I want to do because I believe in sharing, I am sharing this.”
Court declares ‘Fuck White People’ is neither racist nor hate speech
Thulare relied on the artist motivation Hutton had put next to their work at the exhibition, which explained that the posters, the chair and the boots were a demand that “what we must strive for is complete dismantling of the systems of power that keep white people racist”. Hutton acknowledges that white people may feel anger or hurt by the posters, but they should “Learn to fuck the white in you, too”.
Ra’eesa Pather, Mail & Guardian
The artist created the posters after Zama Mthunzi, a student at the University of Witwatersrand, wore a shirt that had “Fuck White People” smeared on the back in black paint. Mthunzi was threatened with expulsion from Wits and a hearing at the South African Human Rights Commission. Hutton says they wore the suit to illustrate that white privilege keeps white people safe from the treatment Mthunzi endured.
“None of the complainants (against Mthunzi) said anything about the front of the T-shirt which read ‘Being Black is Shit’,” Hutton wrote in their motivation.
“But I can do it – that is white privilege.”
Is ‘Fuck White People’ fucking itself?
If one looks at footage of Golden Dean taken at the Chale Wote Street Art Festival in Ghana in 2015, in which the artist parades naked and covered in gold body paint in front of a gawking audience, it is clear how Hutton has deployed their body (Hutton uses the pronouns they, them and their) in the service of spectacle. It’s also clear how that spectacle, combined with predominant ideas about the construct of race and the hierarchy it suggests, is a powerful foil to how whiteness sees itself.
Kwanele Sosibo, Mail & Guardian
The image of Hutton — robust, confounding and undressed — is offensive to the ideas of patriarchal whiteness, usually dressed in an aesthetic glow that sets the norms of beauty.
That is why, as much as Hutton has been glibly called “racist” by white people who disapprove of the Fuck White People installation, which was defaced at the Iziko National Museum in Cape Town last month, these people have also tried to shame Hutton for their outward appearance.
Among the disapprovers was David Duke, a United States Ku Klux Klansperson, who body-shamed Hutton on social media, calling them “a disgusting sloppapotamus”.