Video artist Arthur Jafa on actualizing Black potential, part 1

01/31/23 • 47 min

"I don't want to be the prisoner in a box, even if it's a box I made."

For over 30 years, American visual artist and cinematographer Arthur Jafa has captured the histories and experiences of Black Americans with projects that exemplify both the universal and particular facets of Black life.

In this masterclass in Black thought — the first episode in a two-part series — Jafa shares a free-from improvisation through his breadth of knowledge and understanding of visual culture — embedded with all the references, rhetorics, and personal reflections of someone who has spent a lifetime dedicated to centralizing the varied experiences of Black Being.

LANGUAGE ADVISORY: This episode contains some strong language, including the use of a racial slur in the context of summarizing what the speakers have heard, felt, and experienced in their lives. Listener discretion is advised.

If you'd like to learn more about the artists and references in this episode, please see below:

Ultralight Beam - Kanye West

Love is the Message, The Message is Death - Arthur Jafa

"I don't want to be the prisoner in a box, even if it's a box I made."

If you'd like to learn more about the artists and references in this episode, please see below:

Ultralight Beam - Kanye West

Love is the Message, The Message is Death - Arthur Jafa

Previous Episode

Writer Macarena Gómez-Barris on finding beauty in ambiguity

This [term] 'femme' becomes more possible to me as a figure for not just embodiment, but for thought, action, engagement, connection.

Macarena Goméz-Barris is Professor and Chair of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, founder of the Global South Center at Pratt Institute, an organization which supports artists, activists, and scholars in their efforts to decolonialize local and global communities.

In this episode, Goméz-Barris talks about how one can and must find beauty in the most ambiguous of places, how she uses the word “femme” to escape the embattled histories of the word “female," and how she has—and hasn’t—moved on from a traumatic early swimming lesson with her father.

References:

Constantine Petrou Cavafy

Waiting for the Barbarians

Audre Lorde

Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic is Power

Saidiya Hartman

Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Talents

Next Episode

Video artist Arthur Jafa on actualizing Black potential, part 2

Black people know this: There’s a difference between what you say and what you mean. It’s been a matter of survival for us.

In the second part of this masterclass in Black thought, Jafa continues his free-from improvisation through his breadth of knowledge and understanding of visual culture — embedded with all the references, rhetorics, and personal reflections of someone who has spent a lifetime dedicated to centralizing the varied experiences of Black Being.