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Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death
Accompanied by Kanye West’s anthem “Ultralight Beam” (2016), Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death consists of footage shot by Arthur Jafa, a visual artist with a long career as a cinematographer and film director, as well as clips sampled from films, newscasts, sporting events, music videos, and citizen videos, much of it downloaded from the Internet. These images traverse the twentieth century, focusing on the lives of Black people set against the backdrop of systemic racism and White supremacism.
The artist’s protagonists exist along a spectrum of fame, status, and notoriety: some are well-known, others anonymous, with a few belonging to his immediate family as well as his larger personal, creative, and intellectual community. Taken as a whole, Jafa’s montage comprises a poignant, visceral meditation on African American life, identity, and history. Scenes of trauma, racism, and grief, such as routine police violence, are joined by those of joy, defiance, and creativity, such as the performances by a range of exceptional Black athletes, dancers, and musicians.
Bio Arthur Jafa
American artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa (1960) makes films, artifacts, and happenings that question universal and also specific articulations of Black being. Underscoring the many facets of Jafa’s practice is a recurring question: how can visual media transmit the power, beauty, and alienation embedded in American culture through Black music?
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- This film was #44 in the “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025