Love is the message, the message is death - Arthur Jafa.
Love is the message, the message is death - Arthur Jafa - this is a video created by artist, director, and award-winning cinematographer Arthur Jafa in 2016. In his video, Jafa touches on normalizing expressions of blackness in all forms, which is important because we still live in a world where we continue to eliminate white supremacy in our society. This video also captures so many nuances and layers of the black experience in America.
To be honest, this video left a very big impression on me. I think Jafa was able to perfectly convey his message through editing and a compilation of collected videos that he chose.
Speaking of the video that he used to create this film. Jafa used a lot of images found from viral YouTube videos and stock video sites that had watermarks and not the best quality, but it seems to me that there is some charm in this, as if the poor quality of the video that he used, and watermarks, tell stories from where he got these materials. These scenes also go along with Jafa’s videos about his family, excerpts from his past works and fragments from films.
In this work Jafa also debunks the myth that there is only one way to be black, and also highlights police brutality and respectability politics that have affected blacks. The cultural identity of America. The awakening of a black man in this country can be fatal, and black artists have for generations been shouting to America to recognize this basic fact of our existence.
