In Conversation with Canonical Art History
Introduction | GSU Students Work on Black Visual Intonation | Solange’s Music Videos in Conversation with High Art
CAPTION
Black Visual Intonation - History and Possibilities
Introduction:
One of the “lineages to come” Larry Clark ushered in with his film Passing Through (1977), centers on filmmaker and visual artist Arthur Jafa, who, by his repeated admission, is “obsessed” with Clark’s film.[1] This is because for Jafa black music still remains the art form where black people are the most “actualized” and he places the film at the beginning of his quest for what he calls “Black Visual Intonation:” the study of how black image-making might aspire to “the power, beauty and alienation of black music.”[2] Or, even more specifically, as he has said, “How can we analyze the tone, not the sequence of notes that Coltrane hit, but the tone itself, and synchronize Black visual movement with that?”
Jafa began formulating, and experimenting with, his concept of “Black Visual Intonation” while working with Julie Dash on Daughters of the Dust (1991), which became a major source of inspiration for Beyonce’s Lemonade, co-directed by Kahlil Joseph. Jafa and Dash had two primary preoccupations: rendering of black skin on film (sensitometry); and Jafa’s own idea of using non-metronomic movement to create new spaces of possibilities for the movement of black bodies on film. They were also experimenting with the possibilities and limitations of processes of “identification” on the part of the audience, an idea that Jafa later described as a problem of “empathy,” which he understands as a “muscle” that white people – and dominant culture, more broadly- has not developed as much as minority subjects who have no choice but to learn to “identify” with others in the media.
The essay that eventually took the title of his most popular concept, i.e., “Black Visual Intonation” was a paper originally presented at the Black Popular Culture conference co-organized by Michele Wallace and Gina Dent. It was originally titled “69” and has been reprinted in The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, edited by Robert G. O’Meally (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998): 264-268.
[1] Larry Clark and Haile Gerima (Bush Mama, Sankofa) were at UCLA at the same time. When Gerima graduated and began teaching at Howard University he acquired a copy of Passing Through. There he has been teaching the film since. The first reel of the original print was soon worn out supposedly by two students who had watched it over and over again: Ernest Dickerson, who shot Do the Right Thing, School Daze, Malcolm X, The Wire and a number of music videos, and Arthur Jafa. See liquid blackness in conversation with Larry Clark (interviewed by Alessandra Raengo, Spring 2014)
[2] This is also the “mantra” that TNEG, the production company he founded with Malik Sayeed and was joined by Elissa Blount Moorhead in 2013 has adopted are their mission statement.
In Conversation with musician Steve Coleman, Jafa explains what he means by Black Visual Intonation
Source:
“Love is the Message: An Evening with Arthur Jafa.” Youtube, uploaded by Hirshorn, March 16, 2018.
Source:
“Arthur Jafa and Helen Molesworth in Conversation.” Youtube, uploaded by MOCA, April 11, 2017.
In conversation with MOCA curator Helen Molesworth, Arthur Jafa and Molesworth explore the system of white supremacy that transpires from Love is the Message, the Message is Death, processes of split identification and alienation for audiences of color who are watching mainstream media.
Sources:
Arthur Jafa, “Black Visual Intonation,” in The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, edited by Robert G. O’Meally (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998): 264-268.
Arthur Jafa, “My Black Death” In Everything but the burden: what white people are taking from Black culture, edited by Greg Tate (New York: Broadway Books, 2003): 245-257.
Arthur Jafa, My black death. Moor's Head Press, 2016.
Aria Dean, “Film: Worry the Image,” Art in America (May 26, 2017)
Christina Knight, "Feeling and Falling in Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, the Message is Death." The Black Scholar 49, no. 3 (2019): 36-47.
Calvin Thomkins, “Arthur Jafa’s Radical Alienation,” The New Yorker, December 21, 2020
Acting as cinematographer, Arthur Jafa explores with non-metronomic movement in July Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991)
Four Women (Julie Dash, 1975)
While studying at UCLA, Julie Dash had already made a short film that was extraordinarily sensitive to movement. Set to Nina Simone’s ballad “Four Women,” dancer Martina Young interprets all of them: “Aunt Sarah,” “Saffronia,” “Sweet Thing,” and “Peaches.” Camera angles, use of slow motion and stillness, and expert editing on the gestures and identify and distinguish these character display a previous “research” on the possibilities of disarticulating the black moving (and dancing”) body from the demands to “feed” the cinematic apparatus in pre-determined and containable ways.
Watch:
Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, 1991)
Within the vast literature on Daughters of the Dust, here we only highlight Diana Pozo’s reading of the liquidity of color, which she calls “water color,” and approaches as a radical aesthetic practice. We understand it in the context of seminal works on “sensitometry” as well as John Akomfrah’s concept of “digitopia,” for the way it homes in on the research on sensitometry that had preoccupied African Diasporic cinema and fueled a “digitopic yearning,” i.e., the conviction that digital technologies could reconfigure the poetics of black filmmaking.
Sources:
Roth, Lorna. "Looking at Shirley, the Ultimate Norm: Colour Balance, Image Technologies, and Cognitive Equity." Canadian Journal of Communication 34, no. 1 (2009).
Akomfrah, John. "Digitopia and the spectres of diaspora." Journal of Media Practice 11, no. 1 (2010).
Pozo, Diana. “Water Color: Radical Color Aesthetics in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 11, no. 4 (2013): 424-437.
Yue, Genevieve. "The China Girl on the Margins of Film." October (2015): 96-116.
Keeling, Kara. "3 Black Cinema and Questions Concerning Film/Media/Technology." In Queer Times, Black Futures, New York University Press, 2019): 117-144.
Black Visual Intonation is only the most popular of Jafa’s foundational concepts regarding a black filmmaking aesthetics, which we already explored in the section Arthur Jafa’s Theories of Black Filmmaking and Black Art in Motion . As such, it should be understood within that broader context.
Please also consult additional resources on Jafa and on the liquid blackness research project on his 2013 experimental documentary Dreams are Colder than Death
GSU Students Work on Black Visual Intonation
Rachel on BVI and color in Clockers
Renee Carodine, Jazz Meets Kahlil
Ariel Brown, history | alchemy | evolution
Solange’s Music Videos in Conversation with High Art
CAPTION
Lauren’s Prose
Sources:
Cassie Da Costa, “The Profound Power of the New Solange Videos,” The New Yorker, Oct. 24, 2016
Jenny Gunn’s Letter to the Editor Re: “The Profound Power of the New Solange Videos,” by Cassie Da Costa, The New Yorker, Oct. 24, 2016
Scruggs, “We Are in the Golden Age of the Black Music Video,” Artsy, August 8, 2017
Georgia State University Student Work on Solange:
Yvette Reese Pines, The Phenomenology of the Black Experience: Solange’s When I Get Home
Yvette Reese Pines - Artist Statement
Through this video essay I analyzed the visual album, When I Get Home (2019), by Solange Knowles. I focused on the strategic use choreography that flowed seamlessly with the settings. After listening closely to the lyrics, it is apparent that Knowles was aiming to embrace the wonders of her enchanting black skin while also displaying the difficulty and ruggedness of enduring black womanhood. Throughout my work, I examined how Knowles uses color, movement, and structures to demonstrate the reality of enduring black womanhood while exhibiting the idea of triple consciousness, a term coined by Franz Fanon.
When I Get Home displays a juxtaposition of several black, white, and brown objects which then act as a central visual symbol. It was essential that I read into the use of these colors as race relations were concerned. Living as a black woman in the United States can be grueling at times and many women choose to create art to express their pain and desires. Knowles expressed her experience of feeling restricted, while also having a strong desire to be set free and move how she desired. It was directly represented through a dynamic between limited and confined motion and the use of free, effortless motion.
Yvette Pines is a recent graduate of Georgia State University with a bachelor’s degree in Film and Media Arts. Throughout her undergraduate career she has focused her studies on artistic material from black visual artists. The way in which black artists use their creations in order to express not only their narrative but the experiences of those who are often silenced has been the foundation of her research and analysis. Her essays aim to focus on how black artists use elements of mise-en-scène to illustrate racial tension and their difficulty to directly use their voice in a society that has placed strongholds over their freedom of expression. Musical and visual artists such as Solange Knowles, Hank Willis Thomas, Barry Jenkins, Ryan Coogler and Khalil Joseph have been a great inspiration for her as she continues to analyze new and existing films on a personal level while establishing her cinematic voice.
Nisa Brooks, Solange: Expanding Blackness
Nisa Brooks - Artist Statement
“Expanding Blackness: Solange” explores how Solange’s work utilizes techniques within the Black archive in continuation of expanding the perception of Blackness in our current world. Within four parts, this piece represents the structure and unification of Black art throughout history.
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Nisa Brooks is a visual artist with a focus on videography and painting. As a woman of color, her mission is to utilize a variety of medias to highlight the beauty of POC and immortalize their stories.