Blackout poetry is a technique where the majority of text from a document is blacked out with a marker or a digital tool. The remaining unmarked text reveals a key sequence of words that reads as a poem, while also commenting on the original underlying source material.[3] I first made 18 blackout poetries from archival documents. I then remixed these poems with the names of migrant workers from Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) payroll sheetsto shape the Chinese character ‘崩’, which translates as ‘collapse’ in English.
Inspired by Chilton’s (2013) altered book processing, I approached existing archival texts, literature, and documents with the goal of repurposing them into digital collages. The fragmented character of Collapse (崩) (Figure 26) is layered with multiple meanings and narratives. Some of the contained blackout poems reveal the life stories and experiences of Chinese migrant workers. Other blackout poems reinterprete and transform the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. [4] Collectively, the Chinese character ‘崩’ references a story from the winter of 1866. During this difficult winter, numerous Chinese migrants, who were once farmers living above ground, resided in underground in snow sheds, caves, and tunnels. The sudden collapse of an avalanche reached them in deadly silence, burying them alive, and pushing debris upward (Hushka et al. 2017: 23).
I chose the Chinese character ‘崩’ since it means ‘collapse’ or ‘fall apart,’ and it can refer to the literal meaning of an avalanche disaster in the dead winter. By forming ‘崩’ out of blackout poetry and the names of Chinese workers, the remixed piece reconstructs fragmented pasts and erased voices, turning destruction into resistance. The fragmented white texts, scattered around the black background, also create an effect similar to falling snowflakes, which once again references a wintry scene. The workers broke bones, lost lives, lost stories, lost names. By piecing these fragments together, this artwork aims to reveal what was once buried underneath the snow.
This artwork and the contained blackout poetries repeatedly emphasizes the word ‘names.’ Here, film-maker Craig Baldwin’s concept of ‘media jujitsu,’ which is ‘the act of using the weight of the enemy against himself’ – ‘a form of forcing propaganda to dismantle its own claims’ (Horwatt 2009: 79), can be used to describe the power and function of blackout poetry in transforming, representing, and reframing new meanings. Since the actual names of Chinese immigrant workers have been lost and forgotten, utilizing the weight of the original Chinese Exclusion Act forces the Act to dismantle itself: the words of the Act itself, which originally excluded Chinese from entering the United States, now call for the names of Chinese workers to be voiced and acknowledged.
< Previous
Figure 26: Collapse (崩) Overlay. The artwork in Figure 30 with
the Chinese character “崩” (Collapse) overlaid in red
Next >
[3] According to Adobe’s educational module on Blackout Poetry, the revealed poems demonstrate students’ ‘unique understanding of the primary source document and the purpose of the text’. The exercise also teaches students the digital capabilities of Adobe Creative Cloud: ‘Because Adobe Acrobat enables inking on a PDF, this strategy empowers students to demonstrate their depth of understanding of the original primary source in a meaningful way as the newly created poem creatively [transforms] the meaning and purpose of the original text’ (Adobe for Education 2020).