DEAD PIXEL AND THE DATA COLLECTOR: AN INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST PAP SOULEYE FALL Artist and comic book illustrator Pap Souleye Fall creates work that emerges from the world of “DEAD PIXEL,” an ongoing story they developed, which reveals itself through installation, performance, drawing, sculpture, and video. I invited Souleye Fall to exhibit new work that builds on the “DEAD PIXEL” saga as part of our List Projects exhibition series. Ahead of their show (on view July 30 – November 29), I sat down with Souleye Fall to talk about their perspective on art and comics. Marina Caron: Can you talk about how your work as a comic book artist enters into your visual/installation art? Pap Souleye Fall: I really take seriously the comic aspect of my work, because that’s where all of it started. How I conceptualize art in general comes from how comics are made—the research part of it, and then following through with characters and world-building. When I started my first comic, “Oblivion Rouge,” I was part of all these comic communities that were having political conversations about representation, queerness, accessibility, things that I wanted to talk about in my work. Making comics made me feel like I was
participating in these larger conversations about comics and our stories, you know? I found in the comic sphere and the comic space another way to contextualize the work, as a strategy to not be so attached to the history of art—meaning the history of Western art.
I don’t know how it happened, for real. I was drawing and was like, “What is that?” I just kept drawing, and it started to make sense. That’s how it usually happens—in comics, too. When you’re working on something, these ideas develop, and you start building these characters.
There’s always this conversation—and I look at it conceptually and critically— among Black people and people of African descent about how we push forward our stories. We see that the rest of the world has, for a long time, dictated our stories. These conversations that I have online are really at the center of my practice, in terms of how I think about strategy, context, and conceptualization. That sort of unfolds in “DEAD PIXEL,” which is my version of approaching this question.
DEAD PIXEL and THE DATA COLLECTOR, they’re both part of this digital realm, and THE DATA COLLECTOR is chasing DEAD PIXEL. I actually don’t know what happened between them. Maybe they were friends before? But DEAD PIXEL was willingly giving all these offerings—his eyes, ears, mouth, his skin. He was offering touch; he was offering everything. And then, when he realized there was no reciprocation, DEAD PIXEL hid his nose. THE DATA COLLECTOR is constantly running around trying to take DEAD PIXEL’s nose to retrieve this final sense. Because, I’m assuming, THE DATA COLLECTOR wants to be whole in some way, and he feels unwhole or empty. And DEAD PIXEL doesn’t want to give that up. But sometimes I wonder if they’re maybe the same person . . .
MC: Can you tell us more about the “DEAD PIXEL” narrative and how it informs or generates your installations? PSF: The nonlinear story of “DEAD PIXEL” comes out little by little. In the beginning, I wanted a chapter to come out each time I did a show. Then, once I got into making the wooden books in my installations, it started to land in terms of how I wanted people to interact with it. The books spoke to the sort of intimacy of comics and narrative. Essentially, the spiritual ability of the protagonist, DEAD PIXEL, is green screen. DEAD PIXEL is able to mask and disappear, but also be completely visible. The story developed when THE DATA COLLECTOR appeared.
MC: What are you working on in this show at the List, specifically? PSF: I’m slowly developing what the library will look like, the DEAD PIXEL and THE DATA COLLECTOR library. I have maybe one hundred books, which is not enough. I’ve got to have, like, ten thousand. Like, a whole room you walk into. I’m also working on this idea of an endless digestive system of digital space and
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finding ways to address technological architecture and infrastructure. But I don’t want to lean too heavily digital. I’m still trying to maintain this hyper-material thing. I’m leaning more toward research around African architecture and how there are so many ways to build something. There’s so much new stuff coming out because of the climate and things like that. I’m interested in that sort of science, as well, a kind of material science. My questions are like: What is the body? What is the spirit? Have we found a spirit? I feel like we might have. That’s sort of what THE DATA COLLECTOR or DEAD PIXEL is—a spirit. It’s like a spirit version or an avatar. MC: Very exciting! Last question: What are your top three comics? PSF: There’s this comic I read a long time ago, “Lone Wolf and Cub.” I loved how chunky it was. I also loved “Vagabond” so much. He started out in a very illustrative style, but as he got deeper into the characters and who he was, the illustrations became so real—his drawing style changed so much. I’m obsessed with the journey of the artist in that context. Now, I’m reading a lot of “Berserk”— imagine King Arthur meets Van Helsing. It’s set in medieval times, but with monsters and demons. They’re insane.
——– MARINA CARON
PAGE LAYOUTS: Adrian Alvarez: p. 6, 8 Kelsey Deemer: p. 7 Madison Dudley: p. 2, 3 Yasmin Hamilton: p. 1, 4, 5
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