Spook™... in the beginning

Historical abstract from Logan & Winston (1982). Dictionary of American Negro Biography:
[James Armistead Lafayette]... had been the slave of William Armistead of New Kent County, Va., before being granted permission by his master in March 1781 to serve with General Lafayette, a French statesman who was fighting on the side of the colonists. By July 7, 1781, Armistead was able to infiltrate the headquarters of British general Charles Cornwallis, ostensibly as a servant hired to spy on the Americans but in reality a patriot who spied on the British. ... He is remembered for his written intelligence reports relating to the Yorktown campaign that ended the Revolutionary War... It was the quality of Armistead's reports that led American and French commanders to station a French fleet in Chesapeake Bay, thus forcing the surrender of Cornwallis. After his surrender he "was shocked to find in the Frenchman's headquarters a Negro he had hired to spy on the Americans." (p. 17)

 

Why and how SpookTM came to be?

First and foremost, finding the James Armistead Lafayette story was an accident. Like many other African Americans living in the shadow of the decline of the slave trade, family history is subject full of mystery. Because of this, I like many before me, Alex Haley being the most noted example among many, routinely spend time trying to reconstruct my families' past. The web is an easy first step toolbox for the novice historian. Sometimes it leads to interesting fiction and in my case it led me to a Google search on one of the spellings of my family name, Armistead. James' story, as it was listed in abstract form on Africana.com, was one of the hit results.

 

It was like digging a well for drinking water and discovering gold in the dirty mud of the first few feet of the pit's floor. The discovery was a precious object but not the intended result and certainly not quite what it seems on the surface. I had to consider it for a moment and orient myself to begin the process of assessing its proper significance.

 

The American Revolution was an informational blank spot for me and almost everyone else I knew. Further I realized I'd found a story that made it more real and complex, in good way, even if this character is not a relative of mine, which he may or may not be. I was immediately enriched by the story and wanted to explore it further. This required that I put aside my personal link and pride because reconstructing James' historical role was a more important task. Overt personal objectives would only add confusion while navigating the flow of information surrounding an already elusive historic target. Primarily the value of the opportunity was developing a broader view of James. My near pathological thirst for family information would have to be subordinated to the discipline of a more significant process, reconnecting James with his legacy and a contemporary audience.

 

The second consideration was that the story is complicated. Finding a single, legible way, to retell it would be nearly impossible. James' day-to-day existence, the quality of the relationships he built with his peers, in order to survive as a trusted spy in both the American and British camps, would be hard to show. I would have to construct the scenarios, forensically assembling the pieces, based on the scattered pieces of data and only then try to apply these conditions to the most appropriate media choices.

 

Ultimately, after scanning many of the texts that exist that refer to James, it became apparent that no one had systematically recorded the details real or imagined in a comprehensive manner. James' wartime activities as a spy and life as a free human being afterward were uncharted academic territory. The revolution's heroes are well documented with best selling biographies and fictionalized accounts. This list includes figures such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, men James worked with directly and indirectly to protect their mutual interests. I simply wanted to add James' name to that list, because he was a vital part of the effort to create the country and the privileges these founding fathers sought to provide.

 

All of these things together led me to rethink my routine as an artist. Would it suit the needs of this story? The answer was a clear no. I needed to expand my role and skills to communicate this subject clearly. My practice had to expand to meet the challenge of developing a constellation of narrative forms to exploit the opportunity and allow James historical significance and visibility. I could not just choose to a single media type and channel all the complex ideas into it. So I attempted something new and created simultaneous parallel views of James' life in a variety of media formats. It was unfamiliar territory. I was only looking for a notation to add to the family-tree chart. Now I'm fully immersed. SpookTM has developed into a constellation of coherent seamlessly integrated digital & analog media processes that have made James Armistead Lafayette's life a more complex portrayal.