An analysis of Wyclef Jean’s seminal performance of The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock ’99
“The Greatest Concert You’ve Never Heard Of”, an in-depth documentary of Wyclef Jean’s performance of The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock ‘99. When most people think of Woodstock ‘99, their mind goes to the tumultuous riots that capped the 20th century. However, the riots overshadow Wyclef Jean’s seminal performance that sends 21st century America a message so poignant even the most traditional reactionaries can’t help but recognize.
On a personal note, this is my first time experimenting with this medium (writing YouTube essays), so criticism is encouraged! I’m worried about the video’s length, so feel free to tell me if it’s too long! All of the research, writing, and editing came purely from passion, I believe Wyclef Jean is one of the most important artists to come out over the past few decades. So, it brings me joy to share his vision with you guys. With that said, I really hope to hear your thoughts on the video.
All in all, I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to view my work. Whether you’re an artist, a writer, a filmmaker, a content creator, etc, The goal remains the same; Benign Malevolence is here to unite creatives who feel overwhelmed by the culture industry. I hope videos like these can be a small step in that process.
Being an artist in 2024 sometimes feels like working as a cashier for Blockbuster in the late 2000s. Although our jobs and livelihoods are being threatened by some intangible technological insurrection, we have no choice but to keep our heads down and push forward.
Artists tend to fall into one of two camps regarding the AI-art revolution. Some fear its inevitable fate, while others embrace it with open arms.
As evidenced by Face Reveal (The piece of art above), I tend to lean towards the latter camp. But I wouldn’t be honest with myself, nor an artist for that matter if I didn’t take all of my emotions into account. The fact that a computer can produce my vision in 10 seconds compared to the days, weeks, or months it takes me to sketch out my ideas is a bit disconcerting. The logical response to that is to simply use AI to produce my visions far more efficiently. But every artist knows there’s a sense of pride that accompanies the craftsmanship of each creation.
However, that assumes there’s no sense of craftsmanship in AI art. It took a level of skill on my part to maneuver AI in such a way to create Face Reveal. Moreover, I know my audience can’t recreate Face Reveal, which gives me the similar feeling of fulfillment I get as an artist creating something with my traditional skillset. If AI art produces the same quality of craftsmanship seen in traditional art, what distinguishes the two? If nothing fundamentally distinguishes AI art from traditional art is there even a point in either loving or loathing art’s impending paradigm shift? It’s these types of debates that take for granted this terrific time we as creators are currently living in, and ultimately what it means to be human.
Reading
Do Not Research ‘s article The Origin of Cyborgs, Kit Katay’s take on Donna Haraway’s 1985 essay: A Cyborg Manifesto, I was reminded of Haraway’s prescience. Haraway showed us we wouldn’t be humans if it weren’t for technology, and that it is through tech we’ll evolve beyond what it means to be ourselves. 35 odd years later our transcendence into “cyborgs” has taken a giant leap forward with the AI revolution. This AI art vs. Human art debate is futile. Instead, AI art will be viewed as an extension of our senses like any other technology. This metamorphosis of AI and Human art taking over the hyperreal is a demonstration of Haraway’s theory in action, a continuous globalized and mechanized piece of performance art, and a part of our inevitable transition into cyborgs.
Our Cyborg Transition
A Cyborg Manifesto Alternate Cover (1985)
In Donna Haraway’s 1985 provocative essay A Cyborg Manifesto, she explores the inexorable mutation between humans and machines. Her essay concludes that this fusion is inevitable, merely a biological step in our evolutionary process. But through this transition into cyborgs, there is hope to emancipate the culture.
The term “cyborg” is a metaphor for this evolution. It represents the idea that traditional categories like human vs. machine, or tangible vs. intangible no longer provide useful context for understanding the complexities of existence. Cyborgs aren’t weighed down by traditional social norms, are not divided by race or religion, nor are they prone to prejudice. Instead, they are free from rigid identities (Haraway, 1985).
Our transition into cyborgs began when we took control of our environment. Historically, humans bent to nature’s whim. We didn’t develop fire or learn to communicate until nature dictated it was time to sacrifice our physical strength for greater mental capacity (Katay, 2024). We didn’t evolve into homo sapiens until nature presented us with the opportunity. Today though, we are now the masters of our environment. We are using technology like CRISPR-Cas9 to reprogram the code in our genes, developing sustainable synthetic biological organisms. Destroying natural ecosystems in the name of profit, building artificial ones like the internet to satisfy our rates of consumption. No longer do we abide by environmental constraints like space and time, the only thing holding us back is ourselves.
When we are the masters of our environment and its pressures, and wield the resources and power to change them, we choose what we become. A generation of social-technological interference could alter human genetics forever”(Katay, 2024).
35 years later, is this cyborg epoch Donna Haraway predicted as much of a techno-utopia as she hoped it’d be? Thanks to technology, more fluid social dynamics have flourished and hit the mainstream like feminism for example. There’s an increased focus on progressive policies in Western society. Overall, our quality of life has increased dramatically across the world.
But at what cost? The necessity of technology has paved the way for a reliance on such tools. The cyborg generation born at the crest of the information age knows no life without the internet. The internet is just as much a part of Gen-Z’s central nervous system as any other motor function. Being an extension of our senses, the internet morphs into the psyche like two atoms colliding, and the result is a loss of self. In an act to keep up with the current tech, take part in trends, and stay connected, we chip away at our identity and replace it with the melting pot that is the internet. Haraway was right in that the cyborg evolution would replace such rigid identities, however, replacing the self with the cyborg is conforming by nature.
The Cyborg Artist
Untitled by RonjaFman (2024)
Have you ever considered how we are in a ”loneliness epidemic” despite being in the most connected time in history? When you consider the implications of this reliance on technology the answers seem pretty obvious. Sacrificing one’s identity can have disastrous consequences psychologically.The constant pressure to conform leading to the loss of identity means we aren’t communicating substance, merely spewing the same string of propositions with slightly different sentence structures. No wonder society feels so lonely when everyone’s on the internet reposting the same talking points and repeating the same trends, slowly pushing culture forward a millimeter at a time. Instead of being the culture mover social media was once advertised as, every day it gets closer to realizing its potential as one gigantic mirror for society to gawk at, which is a poetic metaphor for the birthplace of the selfie.
The rampant, unfiltered technological revolution has ushered society into a new epoch and the results are unpredictable. Who would have thought the result of instantaneous communication is a loneliness epidemic? What it means to be a human has an entirely different meaning compared to 1000, 100, or even 10 years ago. Therefore these masochistic news cycles perpetuating seemingly benign debates like human art vs AI art are meaningless. We aren’t humans, we are cyborgs. And art is merely just a fragment of this paradigm shift. Just like any other industry, sheer efficiency and the impulse for profits will take precedence over any sentimentality. The reality is artists have no choice but to adapt. This may be daunting, but just as Donna Haraway predicted, more than anything it will be liberating.
To understand the role of the cyborg artist in the information age we have to recontextualize what art means today. Historically, art’s foundation was in religion (Benjamin, 1969). The bigger the impact a work of art had on its theology, the more valuable society deemed it. However, this took a drastic shift amidst the Industrial Revolution as art’s value was shaped in a different context. Instead of being based on a religious “cult” value”, the newfound ability to mechanically reproduce art meant we could disperse it globally, and as a result, the messages embedded within a work of art would spread like wildfire. Essentially, while the Industrial Revolution emancipated art’s reliance on religion, it replaced it with another artificial value, a political one. All of the most famous works of art within the Industrial Revolution have some sort of political ideology, whether intentional or not; Think of Picasso’s Guernica, Warhaol’s Campbell’s Soup, or Bacon’s Pope.
So, if the Industrial Revolution led to the politicizing of art, what does that mean for this impending technological revolution? On one hand, more tech = more politics. The faster we can communicate ideologies, the faster the public will gobble them up and rehash them during their work breaks and dinners. However, intuition tells me a tipping point is inevitable. Where has this idealistic political hot potato gotten aesthetics? Not very far if we’re being honest. Political-based art has led to a qualitative shift in movements like Haraway’s feminism, but quantitative issues facing society have remained, such as poverty, police brutality, and now the loneliness epidemic! In the long run, relying on AI to improve art’s political impact seems blissfully ignorant. A far more likely conclusion seems to me that this inevitable fusion of AI art and political-based aesthetics will produce ideologies far faster than humans can comprehend, and as a result will lose our appetites. The political value of art will wither away and something anew will take it’s place.
If we’re not careful, this new value propping up the aura of a work of art in the age of the AI revolution could be as simple as capital. It may sound ridiculous to deem a work of art more impactful than the next because of the money it netted. However, the media can’t help but compare box office budgets, auction prices, album sales, drilling these numbers into our brain as if it’s the art’s essence. Whether art’s newfound value hinges on capital, on followers, or on onlyfans subscribers, regardless, art is not dead, it has merely evolved. Through trial and error, my fellow cyborg artists and I will not only search for the meaning of this emergence; it’s true value, but be a driving force behind it, dancing between the mechanisms of today’s revolutionary technological advancements, and today’s most passionate human stories. If that’s not liberating, I don’t know what is.
“We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art” – Paul Valery
References
Adorno, Theodor W., and J. M. Bernstein. “Transparencies on film.” The Culture Industry, 2020, pp. 178–186, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003071297-8.
Benjamin, Walter. (1969). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.. In Arendt, Hannah (Eds.), Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (pp. 217-251). Schocken Books
Couto, Sarah Do. “Loneliness Is Now a ‘Global Public Health Concern,’ Says Who – National.” Global News, Global News, 16 Nov. 2023, globalnews.ca/news/10095898/loneliness-global-public-health-concern-who/#:~:text=The%20World%20Health%20Organization%20%28WHO%29%20has%20warned%20that,public%20health%20concern%E2%80%9D%20of%20loneliness%20and%20social%20isolation.
Haraway, Donna J. “A cyborg manifesto.” The Socialist Review, 1 Apr. 1985, pp. 3–90, https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816650477.003.0001.
Katay, Kit. Kat Kitay: The Origin of Cyborgs, Do Not Research, 11 Dec. 2023, substack.com/home/post/p-122585960.
Plato. The Project Gutenberg eBook of the Republic, by Plato, Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm. Accessed 7 Dec. 2023.
What makes Matt Johnson’s “Blackberry” so important to Canadian art history
My job as an artist is to connect the myths of my country with the future
– Bjork.
That is a quote I first heard in an interview with Matt Johnson, the director of Blackberry, a movie about the invention of the world’s first smartphone in Waterloo, Ontario. Although Canada’s history is just as rich and diverse as many other nations we’re so accustomed to hearing about, it doesn’t get the same level of respect, at least from Hollywood’s perspective. So, when Matt Johnson set out to create the true story of Blackberry, he not only created one of the films of the year but also helped tell Canada’s story as a key player in modern history.
Of course, it’s the real-life Mike Lazaridis, Douglas Fregin, and Jim Balsillie who are responsible for the technological revolution that was Blackberry. However, as Yuval Noah Harari says, it’s the stories we tell that define us as humans.
You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven. ― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Therefore, without Matt Johnson’s exceptional storytelling of the drama of Blackberry, Canada’s prominence in the most recent technological revolution would still be a stone left unturned in the eyes of the public. The way Matt Johnson captures late 90’/early 00’s Ontario and the impending cyber-race led by a few Canadian nerds evokes nostalgia and inspiration that can be felt not only by our country’s people but by the world, for decades to come.
What Makes Blackberry Special?
Starting from the very first shot in the film Matt Johnson places his Canadian audience into a time machine by relaying radio broadcasters’ commentary after a trademark Toronto Maple Leafs loss over a drive west on the 401. Anyone growing up in Ontario at this time is more than accustomed to hearing the groans of our city’s sportscasters over our car’s speakers early in the morning while driving through the endless factories and farmlands that make up this part of the highway.
This contrast making up the stretch of land from Toronto to Waterloo is the perfect analogy for Matt Johnson’s film. The way these obscene factories abruptly jam themselves in between and displace Canada’s abundant agriculture in the name of efficiency is very much akin to Jim Balsillie and the rest of Blackberry’s rise to glory, and their tragic demise.
Highway 401 in the 1960’sHighway 401 Today
We all know how the Industrial Revolution came to be, through its efficiency and stability it proved to be a better system than the agricultural systems dominating the world at the time. Blackberry used these same advantages to take over the phone market at the beginning of the 21st century. Led by the intellectual prowess of Mike Lazardis and the ruthless business skills of Jim Balsillie, Blackberry managed to mass-produce the most efficient and stable phone in the world from the little-known Canadian city of Waterloo.
If you’ve ever been to Waterloo you probably find it just as amazing as I do how Blackberry managed to (illegally) recruit the world’s smartest engineers and developers to this little city about an hour west of Toronto. Waterloo doesn’t have much going for it if you’re not a college student looking to drink the weekend away. Yet at the start of the 21st century, Waterloo, Ontario was the technological capital of the world.
Thanks to the tyranny of Jim Balsillie that would scare the likes of Dracula, the capital of Blackberry’s empire, Waterloo, Ontario, was thriving. Tech geniuses were migrating to the city by the hundreds to play their part in this technological revolution and venture capitalists were flying in their private jets begging Blackberry to take their money.
However, as soon as the company rose to fame, their hubris got the best of them, and they crashed and burned twice as fast. The trademark efficiency Blackberry became known for started to lag behind its competitors and its market share began to dwindle. To retake their position Blackberry sought greater levels of efficiency by moving their manufacturing to China, abandoning not only their Waterloo headquarters but their principles in the process.
“Made in China, the mark of the beast”
– Douglas Fregin (Blackberry, 2023)
One of the first sentences said by Matt Johnson’s character at the beginning of the film. Sure Blackberry’s move to China increased the quantity of their product, however, it was a critical blow to their quality. Cutting corners in respect of the chase for greater efficiency and profit margins is what brought Blackberry its success, but it’s what led to its downfall as well, making this story a Greek tragedy in every sense of the definition.
Blackberry as Canadian History
It’s important to remember Canada’s level of responsibility regarding the degree of technological innovation taking place today. Without Matt Johnson’s storytelling, this fact could easily slip through the cracks of history. This is why I find this film so important not just to Canadian film history, but to modern Canadian history.
I don’t mean to compare Blackberry to other great Canadian movies like Goin’ Down the Road (1970). However, that’s the beauty of art. You aren’t supposed to compare, merely to enjoy. That said I do think Matt Johnson did an incredible job bringing that Bjork quote to life; turning the myths of our country into the future through art.
How the mechanical reproduction of art led to World War II
We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art. – Paul Valery
Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Nights” at the MoMa (2023) photo by me
From Cult Value to Exhibition Value
I took the photo above at the MoMa because it’s a perfect analogy for Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamins’ work is interested in how art changed amidst the Industrial Revolution, specifically in art’s transition from its perceived “cult value” to its newfound “exhibition value”. What gave a piece of art its “cult” status was its aura and magic. Previously, if one wanted to experience Van Gogh’s Starry Night they must be in a unique time and place. Today, all one has to do is look it up online and order a reprint. Any semblance of cult value in a work of art has diminished drastically. As evident in the photo above, the audience is more interested in reproducing the piece of art as a photo than experiencing it as a unique phenomenon of history.
That’s not to say the cult value of art should take precedence over its exhibition value. In fact, the mechanical reproduction of art liberated it because by having its value in the cult, it was dependent on ritual. Historically, a work of art was only as valuable as society deemed it. Today, one can value a work of art for any reason they see fit.
However, art’s inevitable liberation brought on unforeseen repercussions in how it’s consumed. Exhibition value first displaced cult value with the invention of photography. Photographs are not just works of art but are historical testimonies that hold political significance. The added political weight to a work of art makes it harder for the audience to differentiate between criticism and enjoyment because it builds an intimate and sympathetic, or in Benjamin’s words, a progressive reaction. The ritual-based relationship cult-valued art used to have has merely been replaced by a political-based relationship with exhibition-value art.
The Progressive Reaction of Exhibition-based Art
Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses towards art… The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie.
– Walter Benjamin (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, pg.235)
Progressive reactions mean “the conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion” (pg.236). This is because an individual’s perception of art is influenced by the mass audience’s reaction. For example, the public loves the Avengers movies because they know what to expect but critiques Ari Asters Beau is Afraid because it caught them off guard. Moreover, quantity has surpassed quality. The Avengers is a more important film because it has sold x-more tickets.
Reproducing art to such an extent has made us accustomed to its presence. Historically, seeing a painting of a skull would permit all sorts of emotions, dread, fear, and paranoia of a bad omen. Today, we see skulls on clothes, in ads, in emojis, likely multiple times a day. So much art no longer produces a reactionary sense of concentration, but only a progressive sense of distraction.
“For the Love of God” by Damien Hirst (2007)David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio (1609)
The mass reproduction of art has raised the audience’s tolerance to it like a drug addict chasing their next high. Not only that, it’s also dulled our senses, making us vulnerable to ideologies infringing on aesthetics. Today ideology and aesthetics are inseparable. An art-house film of purely abstract images will still provoke ideology, even if that ideology is a rejection of all others. This is dangerous because the audience is led to believe this is of their own volition, however, as Theodor Adorno first argued, our reactions are merely mimetic impulses orchestrated by the powers that be, like a game of operation.
The consumers are made to remain what they are: consumers. That is why the culture industry is not the art of the consumer but rather the projection of the will of those in control onto their victims. The automatic self-reproduction of the status quo in its established forms is itself an expression of domination.
– Theodor Adorno (Transparencies on Film, pg.185)
What happens when the powers that be don’t have the consumer’s best interests at heart? History has shown us what happens when perverse ideologies are integrated into mass-produced aesthetics.
The Mechanical Reproduction of Fascism
In principle, a work of art has always been reproducible. However, the mass scale of mechanically reproduced aesthetics brought on by the Industrial Revolution and the invention of photography around the 1900s is something else entirely. For the first time, art is no longer limited by time and space, meaning ideologies can spread like wildfire. Combine that with the mindless progressive reactions produced by consuming art, it is easy to see how manipulative ideologies underlying aesthetics can be.
Fascist poet and founder of the Futurist art movement Filippo Marinetti is one of the first to discover how the mechanical reproduction of art led to its politicizing. His futurist movement weaponized aesthetics as a means to manipulate the masses. Facists discovered the progressive reactions of mass-produced art can create an inorganic catharsis. The futurist art movement took advantage of this, using art to argue the necessity of war and violence for people to express themselves. This is what provoked thousands of individuals to join various fascist political parties across Europe.
“A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art”.
– Walter Benjamin (pg. 240)
Ironically, the fascist’s strategy to weaponize aesthetics comes straight out of Marx’s idea of “history being a class struggle,”. This all but proves the inevitability of this aesthetic evolution. How the Industrial Revolution emancipated art is undeniable. No longer is art limited to time, space, or its cult values. However, this liberation also opened up the floodgates for a progressive reaction, and a resulting political-based relationship took its place. Until art transcends this relationship, ideologies will continue to plague aesthetics. Yet being aware of this formula is the first step to rising above it.
References
Adorno, Theodor W., and J. M. Bernstein. “Transparencies on film.” The Culture Industry, 2020, pp. 178–186, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003071297-8.
Benjamin, Walter. (1969). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.. In Arendt, Hannah (Eds.), Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (pp. 217-251). Schocken Books
Bergman, Ingmar. Films Incorporated. (1957). The Seventh seal. Chicago.
Bowler, A. Politics as art. Theor Soc20, 763–794 (1991). https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.torontomu.ca/10.1007/BF00678096
Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath (1609)
Hirst, Damien. For the Love of God (2007)
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Monthly Review Press, (1998) (republication) (original publication 1846).
I finally got to see my favorite painting ever, Francis Bacon’s “Painting 1946” at the MoMa.
Earlier in the year I saw some works of the renowned artist & personal inspiration, Francis Bacon, at the MoMa. But to say I merely saw them is an understatement. 31 years after his death, Bacon’s paintings sent me on a surrealist trip only the likes of Hunter S. Thompson could aptly describe. There is something in Bacon’s haunting and violent brushstrokes that confronts human nature at its core. Bacon’s paintings presuppose the idea that art should provoke complex and intense emotional responses buried in the psyche, oftentimes coinciding with the darker aspects of the human equation.
Me beside a Bacon PiecePainting (1946) by Francis Bacon
“Painting (1946)” famously captures Bacon’s aesthetic, depicting a terrifying scene where an anonymous individual oversees the butchery of meat that looks vaguely human. Though Bacon denies this, as he denies imprinting any such narratives onto his art, many people believe the half-faced individual is former UK prime minister Nevile Chamberlain, who took office directly after Churchill amid WW2. Chamberlain is infamous for his “Appeasement policy”, which gave Nazi Germany certain parts of Eastern Europe in return for the UK’s freedom. Whether or not the figure is Chamberlain the conversation remains. This painting confronts life post-WW2 by mirroring the trauma and existential dread festering Europe at the time. The cage-like structure surrounding the individual, the microphones off to either side of him, and the umbrella masking his face, evoke anxiety trademarked by the time.
Painting (1946) is a testament to Francis Bacon’s ability to convey profound emotions and present human nature like none other. His visceral paintings transcend the art form itself by assaulting the audience with the truth of their existence. In doing so, Bacon pushes the boundaries of what it means to express oneself, leaving an imperishable impression on the art world.
Francis Ford Coppola’s 4 movie run is among the most impressive artistic feats in history. Within that run is 1974’s epic, “The Godfather Part II”, starring De Niro, Pacino, Duvall, Diane Keaton, and much more.
The Godfather series is very Shakespearean. While the first tells the tragedy of Michael Corleone’s downward spiral by reluctantly following his father’s footsteps, Part II fleshes out Michael’s fall decades later. However, the real genius of Part II isn’t in Michael’s dealings with Hyman Roth, it is in the flashbacks of Michael’s father, how Don Vito came to be and his rise to glory.
A scene from “The Godfather part II” directed by Francis Ford Coppola (1974)
In the scene above, we see Vito cradling baby Michael with blood on his hands. This shot is moments after Vito assassinated the mobster oppressing his family. Yet, there is still a wave of pessimism in the air. The pessimism arises from Vito’s reality, he’s merely traded one form of oppression for another. Sure, he’s no longer under the mob’s thumb, but now he’s subject to the American capitalist spirit, the culture that permits you to take what’s yours in the name of freedom. The shot is eerily reminiscent of the famous painting “American Gothic” by Grant Wood, which depicts the steadfast, emotionless American spirit the rest of the world has become subject to.
“American Gothic” by Grant Wood (1930)A scene from “The Godfather part II” directed by Francis Ford Coppola (1974)
Here, Vito tells Michael everything he’s done, is for him. This line captures the theme of the series; duty to family versus country. Vito, raised in the old country was taught family takes precedence. Michael on the other hand, rejecting the sins of his father, saw the fight for freedom as the virtuous path, hence why he fought in WWII (against Italy). Vito didn’t want his son fighting for his country, nor did he want him to follow after him. Ultimately though, Vito’s sins spill onto Michael, just like the blood on his hands. In the end, he’s left with a country fighting against him, and no family around to console him.
This mere frame captures the essence of The Godfather and is an example of why Coppola’s aesthetic eye rivals anyone in history.
