Black Visual Intonation in Arthur Jafa’s Audiovisual Experiment

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study the idea of black visual intonation in the video-essay Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death (2016) by visual artist Arthur Jafa. With the aim at discovering the singularity of black cinema in filmic composition, the artist carried out an experiment to examine how embodied memories emerge in the form of songs and dances, recovering traditional cultural features that the Afro-Atlantic diaspora dissipated. We find that the aesthetic-political singularity of black cinema emerges in the black verbal-vocal-visual intonation, which externalizes interactive inner energies and organizes a critical-discursive space in which black people can talk about themselves, their desires, dreams and sorrows.