Arthur Jafa

Dreams Are Colder Than Death

Arthur Jafa

Charles Burnett, Hortense Spillers

What does it mean to be Black in America in the 21st century? The recently formed Black American film group TNEG™ has set out to elucidate this very question. Hearing from the likes of fine artist Kara Walker and musical artist Flying Lotus, the film is based on a deceptively simple approach -- asking a refined list of black 'specialists' as well as 'uncommon folks' questions about what they think, and more importantly as lead director Arthur Jafa states, 'What they KNOW' -- the film is an unprecedented 'stream of the black consciousness' and a strikingly original and rarefied look at black intellectual and emotional life. What's so unorthodox about this simple approach is that the interviews were recorded separately from the images in the film. What results is a breathtaking, kaleidoscopic look of American black life from the dawn of three original filmmakers.

Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death

Arthur Jafa

A reflection on Jafa's desire to craft a "black cinema" that is responsive to the "existential, political, and spiritual dimensions" of Black life. Comprised of found footage sampled from films, newscasts, sporting events, music videos, and citizen videos, all of it downloaded from the Internet, the clips have been woven together and set to Kanye West's anthem "Ultralight Beam." Together the images and music make for an intense, poignant meditation on African American life in the twentieth-century. This history is also the history, by necessity, of racism and prejudice.

Deshotten 1.0

Malik Hassan Sayeed, Arthur Jafa

"Deshotten 1.0" was the first collaboration between Arthur Jafa and Malik Sayeed and is the first TNEG project. Laying in a hospital bed, a young man replays the moments leading up to a nighttime shootout in the streets of New York.

The White Album

Arthur Jafa

If Love Is The Message trained Jafa’s scrutiny on black experience, The White Album shifts his lens to white experience, acknowledging that neither can be understood in isolation from the another. Again, he combines imagery from a wide array of sources, from music videos to confessionals posted to YouTube, to produce a trenchant examination of race relations in the United States.

akingdoncomethas

Arthur Jafa

A montage of filmed sermons and gospel songs performed in black churches from the 1980s to the 2000s.

Ms Hillsonga

Arthur Jafa

Music: Jeff Mills "Medicine Man"

Apex

Arthur Jafa

A striking music-driven 8-minute video work proposes a vibrant scenario in which the histories drawn from the African American narrative of Blackness bear universal significance.