Arthur Jafa’s Radical Alienation

newyorker.com

8 points·philshem··14 comments

Former WASP magazines and cultural venues “discover” black artists after all this years only because they’re black, nothing about their art, nothing about their inner feelings and everything that might be artist/related that it’s not in some way or another related to said artists’ “blackness”. It’s Get Out (the movie) taken to the next level.

Come on, my friend. We all know that New Yorker is not a WASP magazine.

WASP privilege is fading. It's either melt into humanity or lift the future cultural leaders into heaven. They are doing the latter.

The problem with lifting future leaders is they are not ready yet. They need humanity to grow to a point where the next cultural force has something to say.

> Most of the images are found footage, taken from YouTube. Their emotional impact comes from the way Jafa has put them together, shifting and editing and choreographing to create a flow of deeply resonant juxtapositions...

As I read the article, I couldn’t help but to think what a beautiful reason for tools like youtube-dl to exist.

I haven’t found an official video source, only this bootleg copy:

Arthur Jafa: “Love is the Message, the Message is Death”

https://youtu.be/lKWmx0JNmqY

https://archive.is/w2G7R

I saw "Love is the Message, the Message is Death" at the SFMOMA.

It was the first and only time I have ever been reduced to complete sobbing in public by a piece of art.

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