‘Dudus’ is the nickname of Jamaican drug dealer Christopher Coke – a startling example of nominative determinism. Coke trafficked literally tons of marijuana and cocaine to the US before being handed down a 23-year sentence, after the mission to finally arrest him cost the lives of 70 people. During his extradition to the States, many Jamaicans took to the streets with placards supporting Dudus, whom they supposedly saw as more trustworthy than the authorities. This mixture of extremes, unpredictability and weird black comedy is at the heart of R.I.P. Germain’s intriguing ICA installation.
After admiring some merch (more of which later), you scan a QR code and get a handy list of terms to help you ‘mine’ the exhibition. These include ‘client’, ‘display’, ‘Black culture’ and ‘Hatton Garden’. Then you approach a domestic front door mystifyingly adorned with a Christmas wreath. Inside is a room with some garment rails and cardboard boxes. Beyond it is another room with a video game set up, and beyond that is a weed farm.
Upstairs in part two, a motionless man in a rubber mask sits on a stool inside a glass box watching more game footage, like a yardie Joseph Beuys. He wears the same ‘security’ hoodie you can buy downstairs. The only thing he’s apparently guarding is the massive chain he’s wearing. Then there’s a whole jewellery shop, with another ‘security’ guy in another hoodie, standing behind a vitrine packed with £100k chains, including a custom-made – and grotesque – white Tupac-Jesus.
There are so many layers of irony and allusion in the show that I gave up ‘mining’ it pretty quickly and just enjoyed it. Assuming the weed plants aren’t real, are the rings and chains? Is this guy really security (he’s very nice and informative if so), is the man in the box even an actual person and who the flipping fuck would want a ‘Caucasian Tupac’ medallion at any price?
On the one hand, you could read ‘JDfUWWDfD’, with its glossary of useful terms and merch, as a pisstake of well-intentioned curators uncomfortably trying to engage with ‘Black culture’. Or of Black artists exploiting that. Or both. But if selling drugs – or selling out by commodifying your identity – is the only way to level up, who are we to blame anyone for trying? Just as long as everyone involved in the transaction is aware that whether it’s art, precious metals, drugs, money or ‘freedom’, all value systems are illusory and susceptible to sudden – and sometimes violent – revision.
