Arthur Jafa - MAGNUMB

Louisiana Publications

Arthur Jafa has made a name for himself as an American video artist with themes like Black American culture, slavery and the opposition Black Americans face to this very day being at centre of his artistic explorations.

The release of the book MAGNUMB followed an Arthur Jafa exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, which is not only known in terms of modern Danish architecture for its synthesisizing landscape, architecture and art but also for harbouring an extensive permanent collection of modern art spanning the last hundred years along with its comprehensive programme of special exhibitions. 

Given the aforementioned, it is not for nothing included in Patricia Schultz’s book “One thousand Places to See Before You Die”, ranking within the first one hundred in the realm of art museums.

Louisisana’s book on Jafa accompanied and contextualised his exhibition with an overview of his often confronting video depictions of Black American life, which are informed by his lifelong fascination with imagery, photographs and cinematography and which have been catapulted to the forefront once Black Lives Matter became a global movement that found its way into prime-time media, thereby entering every facet of mainstream culture.

It is interesting to see Jafa’s cinematography within an art context, as it conveys both the beauty and power as well as the alienation the broad scope of Black culture has been experiencing. What I like about Jafa’s approach is that tackles American realities from different angles and thereby conveys a comprehensive multi-dimensional prism, through which the recipient is enabled to actively participate with his own interpretations.

The narrative of Jafa’s work is guided by stark contrasts, juxtapositions and an ubiquitous ambivalent openness, which invites to think beyond simple dichotomies of good and evil.

Apart from the political component, Jafa’s virtuosic technical skills enable him to masterfully compose new realities by creating a patchwork of nuances, the sum of which create a significant and visually coherent powerful whole that is much more than the mere sum of its components would have one think, with pain and suffering being a recurring motif and common denominator.

It is interesting to see Arthur Jafa incarnate at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art as the aestheticization of the traumas of white violence against Black people would have most likely been viewed by an exclusively privileged audience, thereby subversively raising deeper going questions about Denmark’s widely suppressed colonial history.

In essence, an ode in book form to an essential artist whose oeuvre engages the recipient in questioning the status quo and the role one plays in the maintenance of it.

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image from publisher website

The Formative Years

The Accüsed

Founded in 1981, The Accüsed instanenously became a pioneering underground band in that they merged the best bits of thrash metal, hardcore punk and grindcore to create their very own mélange, i.e. what they referred to as splattercore, and thereby helped to give birth to what ultimately became known as crossover trash.

With the first three years being spent on refining their sound and experimenting with different line-ups, 1984 saw the vocalist of The Fartz (Duff McKagan’s first band) join the band and added his idiosyncratic choking-sound vocal delivery to their hybrid equation, which musically had evolved to constitute the musical equivalent to a splatter movie courtesy of a tight unit with metallic buzz-saw guitars and rapid-fire drumming. 

Add a mascot with striking features and recurring b-movie themed lyrical content revolving around Martha Splatterhead and you got a band that was bound to create their own lane.

Having fallen in love with their debut The Return of Martha Splatterhead, I could not wait to see them incarnate in a live environment and what I experienced in the early 1990s blew my mind as the maniacal music was matched by the band’s infectious on-stage demeanour with Blaine leaping around the stage like a man possessed. They were exactly as frantic, chaotic and furious as I hoped for, set the bar high and established themselves as one of my favourite live bands.

A band that defined crossover by merging thrash a la early Slayer, mixed it with crust and early hardcore punk and thereby created fertile ground for a myriad of bands to blossom and bloom, including the more prominent ones still riding the recent wave of the resurgence of thrash.

If you like bands like Municipal Waste, do yourself a favour and treat yourself to the masterpiece that is The Accüsed’s debut full-length:

Doug Aitken: New Era

Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

Exhibition: 20 October 2021 – 06 February 2022

Occupying prime real estate at Circular Quay vis-à-vis from the Opera House, Sydney’s home of contemporary art has after a profound overhaul in 2011 redefined itself not only via an aesthetically and architecturally pleasing exterior, which marries the original sandstone building with contemporary features, but as a haven championing new age and forward-thinking art with its circulation system based gallery, a formidable rooftop café, sculpture terrace, high-tech education centre, and a 120-seat lecture theatrette.

Given the implications of the recent pandemic induced lockdowns on terra australis, it was fantastic to see after many delays the American artist Doug Aitken incarnate with his first major solo exhibition in the Southern hemisphere, comprised of key works of his oeuvre spanning close to three decades.

Heralded for his idiosyncratic approach to channelling installations, sculptures, photographs and constantly shifting multi-screen environments into an immersive, mesmerising and prismatic other world that culminates in a conceptually fluid display of moving imagery and sound, the exhibition invites one to become actively involved and get lost in Aitken’s multi-sensory ambience. 

My personal highlight of the exhibition is the large-scale poetic sound installation Sonic Fountain II: Built into a bouldered wasteland-esque lunar scenery, drops of water are unleashed from a suspended multi-valve apparatus into a milky pond, with the sound being amplified by an algorithm which ebbs and flows the recordings captured by microphones within and outside the pond, resulting in sounds pieces reminiscent of John Cage.

Inspired by mobile phone technology and its impact on our social behaviours, the exhibit NEW ERA not only informed the title of the exhibition but conveys the marriage of seemingly antagonistic concepts of union and dislocation through a mirrored fragmented structure that serves as a gate to a screen filled tunnel that viewers are invited to wander through and being wrapped up by.

The way the exhibition has been designed and orchestrated is devoid of an imposed narrative – au contraire, the viewer is enabled to author and determine an individual perspective through the carving of their own lens with Aitken providing food-for-though via real and imagined landscapes of ideas, using mirrors to reel the viewer into his cosmos and place him at the centre.

The result is a carefully calibrated and boundary-pushing composition of ideas for which the MCA becomes the conduit to a ruminative and multi-directional wider world – one that is transitional, dynamic and hidden in plain sight.

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image courtesy of MCA

(Un-)Becoming Who You Are? Self-optimisation Kiwi-style.

In an age of self-optimisation and an endless strain to get out of one’s own way, supplements that promise to improve your mood, creativity, memory and cognitive ability not unlike the nootropic NZT-48 in The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn are ubiquitious and proffered everywhere. 

In most jurisdictions, nootropics are classified as as dietary supplements, which allows grey areas for  manufacturers’ statements about benefits often being vague and/or supported by less-than-compelling scientific evidence as they do not require double-blind, placebo-controlled, pharmaceutical-style human studies before going to market.

The upside is that one does not need a prescription to acquire them and knowing quite a few people who swear by the mind stimulating, blood flow increasing and adrenalin raising effects of some nootropics, I delved deeper into the matter.

Intrigued by the hype, I set out to try some nootropics to see if there was something worthwhile to join my beloved coffee as a performance- and cognitive enhancing and energy boosting drug, knowing well that many nootropics are supposed to take time to build up in the body before one can actually feel their impact , the fact that they of course do not make one more intelligent as well as other contributing individual factors, e.g. how demanding the task at hand is and the susceptibility of human nature to placebo effects.

Ārepa is a 100% natural and caffeine-free nootropic from New Zealand, the primary benefits of which are to result in promoting mental clarity and calm, the improvement of focus under mental fatigue and the support of normal neurological function along with supporting physical performance / recovery and supplying a full-serve of vitamin C.

Ingredients-wise, Ārepa focusses on drawing benefits from the natural side of things, i.e. the antioxidant and polyphenol qualities of Blackcurrants; amino-acids like L-theanine, which is found in green tea and lauded for its stress and anxiety reducing qualities while avoiding drowsiness, and an idiosyncratic ingredient that pays homage to Ārepa’s home country:  Extracted from the bark of New Zealand grown pine trees, the broad-spectrum polyphenol Enzogenol meant to support and enhance cognitive functions.

Ārepa Performance comes in liquid (300ml) as well as in powder form, both of which are devoid of sugar, caffeine or other nasties and flavour-wise, I find it to be quite an enjoyable potion due to the tart flavour courtesy of the pectin and acid of the Blackcurrant. 

Now, what are the effects?

I found it interesting that the effects are not dissimilar from what I would gain from an efficient energy drink in terms of experiencing a jolt 20-30 minutes after ingestion with the benefits that it feels like a more sustained and slowly building mental clarify, which the added benefit that there are neither sugar crashes, energy slumps nor caffeine withdrawal.

With a natural range that provides products not merely for one-off consumption to assist with a key moment, but also daily consumption to assist with a deeper lying cognitive concern, paired with a rather moderate price compared to other nootropics, Ārepa is worth checking out when you are looking for a natural pick-me up, especially if you harbour a preference for slightly astringent berry flavours.

Let’s stay in New Zealand, shan’t we?

No Ugly is the telling and metaphorical name of another Kiwi brand, whose credo is based on opposing the endlessly tiresome competitive mentality of our day and age along with its dismal implications, i.e. ugly, non-ethical practises and ugly, non-nourishing ingredients finding their way into our food.

In essence, No Ugly offers health and wellness tonics that are filled to the brim with antioxidents like a New Zealand-native pine bark extract, vitamins, proteins, electrolytes and minerals.   

Vegan and low sugar in nature, No Ugly is the brainchild of creative heads who emerged in the world of advertising and who eventually saw the ligh, i.e. became aware of the importance of good nutrition and overall wellness as a concept to explore the creation of a brand that was the equivalent of a clarion call for people ready to wage a war on all things ugly and appreciated products with substance and purpose.

So far, so good, but does it work?

A tangible benefit is that each bottle of No Ugly is a good source of potassium, calcium, phosphorus, vitamins B1/B2/B3/B5/B6/B12, vitamin C, and vitamin E. Given the aforementioned, I find that especially after long and big nights,  it aids in the reduction of tiredness and fatigue and electrolyte balance. 

No Ugly comes in different variants, named after their purpose and focus ranging from telling names like collagen-ladden “Skin”, nap-inducing “Sleep”, green-coffee extract and L-theanine stacked “Focus”, probiotics centered “Gut” and one zeroing in on enhacing to evicting all nasties that do not pay rent, i.e. “Detox”.

What I like about No Ugly is that it ranges at the affordable end of the spectrum and aspires to be a visionary brand with a higher purpose as apart from well-being, focus is set on sustainability, a recycling program and care about the environment.

While it would be quite a task to keep the whole range on one’s disposal, picking up a No Ugly depending on what I am trying to accomplish has become a trusted go-to.

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images from company websites

The Formative Years - Sonic Youth

My relationship with Sonic Youth is an interesting one in that I have been listening to them since the early 1990s and while I never not appreciated them for carving their own niche by redefining what could be done with guitars via their unorthodox tunings, as a juvenile delinquent I found them a tad too tame sonically to wave my pom poms for them in public, especially after they experienced mainstream success.

It was not until 2011 when triggered by learning about the divorce of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore that I made a deliberate effort to dive into their back catalogue only to realise what a brilliant, trailblazing band it was and how vitally  important they were for what was to become labelled as noise rock.

Formed in 1981, they released their debut 7” on Neutral Records - a fairly conventional effort even by post-punk standards. Following tours and osmosis with the Swans, things started to get interesting with their Confusion is Sex album and the subsequent Kill Yr Idols EP, which saw them taking a deliberate detour into louder, more dissonant territory. 

Following a fairly successful tour of Europe, 1985 saw the release of the album Bad Moon Rising, which in essence sounds like a dedicated drawn-out artsy jam session with Americana being the common denominator theme-wise.

Their debut on SST Records, i.e., EVOL, saw Sonic Youth starting to refine their DNA: Darker and more in charge of channeling their alchemy to make it more immediate and tense yet interweaved with glitter-poppy parts and raw instrumental bits. There is an intriguing, underlying unease which throughout the album builds up and eventually culminates in a seven-minute-long cacophonous noise crescendo.

Fast forward to 1990 and the release of Goo, their major label debut with the iconic Raymond Pettibon cover artwork, which saw them expand on alt-rock stylings and becoming more accessible without alienating their core fan base.  

By utilizing and recontextualizing recorded sounds as raw material, fragmenting and merging it with their trademark knack for tonal elasticity and reconciling it all with garage-punk’s structural conventions. It is one of my favourite alternative rock albums and is still a pleasure to listen to back-to-back thirty years later.