Arthur Jafa's 7½-minute 2016 video, 'Love is the Message, the Message is Death' - a dazzling, deeply emotional montage of found footage showing aspects of the black experience- feels timely.
Most of it was pieced together in two hours. The music, a song by Kanye West, was added a few days later. Weeks of rearranging and tweaking followed. The result is perhaps the most powerful work of contemporary art of the past decade.
Arthur Jafa’s 7½-minute video, “Love is the Message, the Message is Death” — a dazzling, deeply emotional montage of found footage showing aspects of the black experience, set to the sounds of West’s “Ultralight Beam” — was made in 2016. If it was timely then, it feels even more so now. And yet it hasn’t been easy for everyone to see.
by Sebastian Smee
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(2020-06-28)
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