We seem to have entered an era of a miserablised ‘politics of semantics’ represented by arguments over phrases such as
Bill Clinton's, “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” and London's Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Condon's
nervous wordplay in trying to avoid the acknowledgement of the institutionalised racism of the police.

At the same time, Natural Selection very much delves into this politics of semantics as it is constructed through software
conventions and the protocols built into the World Wide Web. Perhaps we can develop this - Matsuko, you worked very
much in the image construction and design of the paper edition - Colour Separation. Could you say what the shifting masks
and racial stereotypes relate to in the paper? What relationship might the ultra-gridded structure of the edition have to a
database? It almost reminds me of a cellular structure in a spread-sheet

Matsuko Yokokoji: Colour Separation is an element of the National heritage ‘Campaign’. It functions as a poster and also
as a free distribution paper. We made eight stereotypes and four masks. That's the system. It makes a chart of the non-
sense of racial categorisation.

We could see the myth of racial classifications. In Japan when | was growing up in the 60's and 70's, we knew about it
through the media. We knew that black people look like Stevie Wonder, we knew that white people look like Marilyn
Monroe. So we actually tried to build these stereotypes out of the photographs of faces of real people. And what we found,
in trying to make these stereotypes of the four colours, but mixing in the ideas of the stereotypes from other people in
Mongrel too - a real mix - was that these stereotypes were completely unattainable. What we ended up with then was com-
pletely untypical stereotypes. Anti-stereotypes. No glamour at all! The kind of people you'd see walking the streets in
London.

The masks perform operations on the faces. They stitch them up. They are roles that move across the entire spectrum of
classification that we represent, across all the untypical-stereotypes. You have White Masks on Black Skin, but you also
have Black Masks on Black Skin, Yellow, Brown, whatever... It produces a more complex tangle of interrelationships and
conflicts.

MF: Mervin, your site for Natural Selection, (httpy/www.mongrel.org.uk/BAA) seems to be an extraordinarily sprawling
mess that almost matches the complexity of the web itself in its wrecking havoc on the stupidity and cruelty of the British
immigration system. It jumps in and out of different types of English, different styles of web design, stolen data, data orig-
inated by you and by the Migrant Media video collective and others. It generates confusion, but never lets up on the polit-
ical pressure. What do you think people who end up on the site from the Natural Selection front end are going to.think?

MJ: An immediate response to your observation would be ‘that's the yard in me’ you see growing up in Jamaica it is en-
demic that you learn to improvise, in other words ‘tun yuh hand an mek fashion’ seen.

Now the BAA thing goes out to a primary group of yardies mentionable those who are thinking that the grass is greener on
the other side, and the overall analogy of that is not necessarily. the language thing is or has become a form of cultural
identity so no longer am | just a English speaking person but to express one self in this kind of broken English dubbed pa-
tois (patwa) contemporary it adds flava and undermine bureaucracy.

| believe though that it is important for you to understand the fundamentals of my implications and method of construction;
to answer the question on the style and chaotic method that seem to be the underline composition you have to imagine
things from behind my mask where unstructured and chaotic deranged behaviour is the most intelligent and effective
means of communication without being detected specially when dealing with various authority and institutional organisa-
tions. this is how the lie becomes the truth vice versa. BAA is consequently absolve from the fact that this policy of abuse
and brutality has been perpetrated at against me and others whose only crime is to want to travel the world like Columbus,
Marco and the great Admiral Penn and General Venables, with the only difference being their is no ‘design’ to it as was
with The Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.

And the opposite is true if you were to visit Jamaica.