Black Holograms: Techno-Necropolitical Performance of Blackness and Its Eradication

A fervent and outspoken fanbase thinks that the likes of Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson are still alive, living out their days shrouded in secrecy, under assumed names. Such conspiracies partly fueled the first pop music resurrection. In 2012, Tupac made a surprise appearance at Coachella,2 though he had been dead for over a decade. And Michael Jackson moonwalked straight out of the great beyond into a 2014 performance at the Billboard Music Awards,3 performing “Slave to the Rhythm.” He, too, had been dead for five years.Tupac and Jackson performed posthumously in live concerts as holograms—a sort of techno-, necro-resuscitation. Other artists have since been folded into the holographic touring circuit, including Whitney Houston, Maria Callas, Amy Winehouse, and even Billie Holiday. Rob LeDonne writes: Imagine, if you will, sitting in Harlem New York's famed Apollo Theater. The lights go down and suddenly the legendary Billie Holiday takes the stage in 2015. Of course, don't let the fact that she died in 1959 freak you out. Thanks to the burgeoning art of hologram technology, Holiday is appearing before your very eyes as a digital apparition, electronically conjured from the afterlife in order to wow an entire new generation of audiences.4In a contemporary popular culture context that seems to value remakes, throwbacks, thrifting, and retrospectives, these holographic performances are designed as vehicles of nostalgia;5 vehicles created to ensure that these artists and their estates are continually and indefinitely profitable.6 But cultural critics have also homed in on the fact that these performances are, “on an ethical and economic level, . . . a form of ‘ghost slavery’ . . . a form of unfair competition: established stars continuing their market domination after death and stifling the opportunities for new artists.”7 In this way, market demands and economic conditions affect life and livelihood—the careers of living artists and the posthumous legacies of the deceased. These pressures serve as a precondition for reimagining the extent and teleology of life.The cultural conditions within which this performance practice emerges are ones where the ability to discern between reality and fiction is at a nadir. Auto-Tune has become a default in the popular music recording industry; Catherine Provenzano writes that even in live performances, pitch-correcting software airbrushes the pop star's voice.8 Similarly, for years now, we've observed a trend in which reputable news network anchors make cameo appearances in fictional films and television series; for example, in House of Cards, Rachel Maddow provides a fictional news report, replete with the licensing and mise-en-scène of a real-life MSNBC broadcast.9 Generative adversarial networks (GANs)—where two artificial intelligence (AI) programs one-up each other to create the most realistic product—have been made out as threats to national security and possible catalysts for nuclear war.10 What if a deepfake video incites violence, declares war, or worse? Social media filters alter bodily contours, hair and eye colors, skin tones, and voices. Meta Quest (formerly Oculus) is trial-ballooning AR Ray-Ban smart glasses using technology that provides virtual reality escapes that meld seamlessly with real scenery and action. At the time of this writing, an international “Kill Notice” has been issued by the Associated Press for doctored images circulated via a bungled press notice from Kensington Palace.11 Conspiracy theories have ensued regarding the whereabouts and livelihood of Kate Middleton; indeed, her eventual resurfacing and announcement were themselves rumored to have been an AI deepfake.12 The Associated Press has also celebrated five Pulitzer Prize finalists in journalism who have disclosed a partnership with AI (OpenAI) in the penning of their pieces.13 Netflix is accused of using AI-generated portraits in a documentary of Jennifer Pan—a woman accused and convicted in a murder-for-hire scheme—in order to present her as wholesome and joyous. Kendrick Lamar and Drake's epic rap battle has given rise to questions concerning the use of AI on the diss tracks. In response to the digital conjuring of Tupac's voice, Lamar remarked “that Drake's imitation would make Tupac roll over in his grave.”14 He asked, “Am I battling ghosts, or A.I.?”15 Museums, encouraged by the continued growth of the digital humanities, have mounted holographic experiences designed to provide visitors with an immersive, sensorial experience. Megan Reynolds writes that the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, built on a site where Black people were formerly imprisoned, provides virtual testimony of their (past) conditions. The holographic testimonials are “black and white, with a slight blue overtone. This coloring not only makes them feel eerie, like apparitions, but as if they exist out of time. . . . The holograms also do not depict the entire speaker's body.”16 As these technological advances—capitalist, political, historiographic—continue to proliferate, we're left with a brimming sense of disquiet and a distrust in facts and bodies.Just as deepfake technology blurs reality and fiction, generating ethical dilemmas around consent and authenticity, holographic performances dissimulate the bodies of deceased Black artists, perpetuating exploitation in the digital age. All that exists is the hyperreal. In this sense, what we perceive is merely an illusion or concealment of an absence, according to Jean Baudrillard, who proselytized the death of the real. What he meant was that, at some unspecified time in the past, society and various state machines began perpetuating signs that lacked a referent, leading to what he calls “the liquidation of all referentials.”17 (Notice the terminology of “liquidation,” which underscores economic value and also suggests a type of death.) No longer are we dealing with the structuralist claim that a sign refers to something out in the world, external to the sign system. For Baudrillard, the apparatuses have become so adept at fabricating signs that we no longer possess the ability to differentiate between what is (the referent) and its copy (the simulacrum). Baudrillard's four phases of representation are: (1) a more or less accurate reflection of a basic reality; (2) a misleading, perhaps romanticized, presentation of reality; (3) an absence of a reality, obscured by signs; (4) an irrelation between representation and reality, a pure simulacrum (i.e., a “failed copy”), a copy of a copy. With this presentation of stages, Baudrillard has theorized a genealogy of the sign as it becomes divorced from its referent, as well as the various stages and their associations with different aesthetic I that the holograms in this to the stage and are of of and of of of which of that Black bodies on the popular that the of holographic performances of deceased I with the representation of Black bodies within these were these artists out for the of Black bodies the of the and the of do to of that even In other is made after the do these performances the of even In even to these this with to Black of and the cultural of the and Black I the in which these holographic performances are of a to as The performances that, in some sense, Black bodies have been Black bodies have been as the of a I this have as a Other have the and in which and from a Black the between and This of suggests that is no at Black bodies are pure of and performances that “the of other a for an of an of a a of as a a This of the Black the and within of the to (i.e., to Black bodies affect of of of voice, of in order to that in of the ability to discern has to a on a of holographic was to into the voice, which divorced from the it was and Similarly, as a hologram that for a and of his [in and its were we to the in which and performed of and to we with the fact that these holographic performances are in a that to a of Black and The aesthetic and of the these performances to of as an that holograms a of that Black bodies as at the them I a genealogy of of and as they to the of cultural I holographic performances by deceased Black I are within a of and Black bodies the which becomes given the of holographic These performances the of and the of to of and In other these performances and their of death are for of and I that the of these this to of the of the is a that from the between reality and that has so the of Black of Black as and of Black bodies as and of I that, in hologram is an between and the illusion that a as (i.e., a But that is still only an and is still into a that a representation of The is the of images of is a technology that to an the as a to the of the of This the of In the his in and a in The to its and to the of that the that to and these into a like by two images a by a for each The the images but as a of the a of and The images are and the a with and it as a form of technology that . . . to an appearance of reality which the with its seems to a regarding his The as that which is a was to in images an the technology of via and the on for a he writes: were at a as if we were from A of a its with a the its and a we had in of and into a of and with into an of with of with of as as to or as with something of the of a which to all I we were all the his and his a under its The was and the two great eyes at more for some The but in the the shrouded had we were not not as a but in all as an of this at of the in which becomes a of of in the on the of or of to is the that and the in time and that the to a affect of and that a sense of and And these are a of within this of bodies is a that the technology had of the the was But of also underscores the sense of as a of the to the is The of the on the to is as a and as a of death but a type of and this technology by it to the he which was into an by The and the for an in his as a Other that on his For the is made into an for This technology on the of at a time was to his for its with the of images that, in to and is that down a which that the was for the and images as the from more of to in which to of people from the the of or Black people the of to a cultural the representation of an in time. 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