Arthur Jafa

Jafa’s subject is bigger than politics—it’s the matter of black life in the United States. A century of police brutality and political gains, of triumph, tragedy, and resilience has been distilled into seven lyric and searing minutes of rapid-fire clips culled from a passel of sources. A partial list: silent movies, documentary footage of marches and concerts, sports coverage, music videos, news stories, Hollywood blockbusters, police-dash-cam downloads, citizen journalism, the artist’s home movies, and, of course, YouTube. (To viewers familiar with media art, the results may suggest a woke update of Bruce Conner’s pioneering 1958 film collage, “A Movie.”)

Retrieved from:

Scott, Andrea K. "Arthur Jafa's Crucial Ode to Black America." The New Yorker. January 12, 2017. Accessed April 19, 2017. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/arthur-jafas-crucial-ode-to-black-america.