Kodwo Eshun

Fantastic Voyages


BETA 18

18:00:03 KODWO ESHUN [...] So you can see him taking aspects from supremacism, 
and taking aspects from cubism ...

18:00:08 [Klappe]

18:00:09 KODWO ESHUN ... and just taking the aspects of the diagonal, and the 
tilt, and the ... the angle, and the vector, and the ramp. So everything is 
triangles and vectors and slices. And then you can see him applying that ... to 
the body form of GRACE JONES. He really wants to alter the body map. So, there 
is a famous advert where GRACE JONES and the body of a car ... ehm ... morphed 
into each other, and GRACE JONES became, like, the personification of a car. 
That was very famous. And there's ... yeah, that's it ... and now ... that made 
a huge impact, you know. And the slicing of GRACE JONES' body into plains, that 
was very key ... ehm ...

18:00:48 KODWO ESHUN And the other thing, like ... eh ... good is that ... he 
always had that, like, hyper-primitivist aspect. Which i was always ambivalent 
about, because ... eh ... he always made ... he always had this ... ehm ... If 
you remember, the third aspect of the cyborg is, like, human, machine and 
animal. And you can really see that his aspect ... he was fascinated by the 
human animal aspect. So he was always making this parallels between GRACE JONES 
and leopards, between GRACE JONES and wild animals. And I never knew how to 
think of this. Sometimes it was really good, sometimes it was borderline 
offensive to me.

18:01:18 KODWO ESHUN I could never quite ... I could never quite work out what I 
thought of these incredible strange images ... ehm ... Sometimes I really didn't 
like it, these images where GRACE JONES would have these excessive lips. Then 
sometimes I think I can't ... but she's not even human anymore. It's not a 
question of him ... making a stereotypical image of a ... of an African-
American, or West-Indian face. That's because she's not even human, she's ... 
ehm ... she's this ... she's this Womandroid, she's this, like, West-Indian 
Womandroid who hasn't even been seen before.

18:01:46 KODWO ESHUN So I have moved backwards and forwards, and sometimes I say 
this is amazing, and sometimes I say this is really terrible, backwards and 
forwards. And this is where I see the value of it. Because it means, like, I 
could, ten years later I could still watch it like ... hmm ... still ... still 
unstable about this. So it's good, my valuation hasn't settled at all

18:02:04 Even though I would say that it was much more successful on photo than 
on video. The videos have aged a lot and seem very theatrical and not very 
cinematographic. Except for this CITROEN ad which already worked with the new 
digital possibilities, in the first stages. And probably, nowadays HYPE 
WILLIAMS, with digital possiblities, could possibly translate the photo montage 
methods into cinematographic methods.

18:02:48 KODWO ESHUN You're right. I mean, these videos now look very flat. They 
look like film photographs. Everything is very flat ... ehm ... everything is 
... ehm ... in profile ... ehm ... they really do look like translations of his 
best ... ehm ... his best images from magazine articles. And maybe this was his 
strength, to suggest ... ehm ... a number of possibilities, to do with slicing, 
and angles, and a dynamic ... a dynamic framing of the Womandroid. Maybe this 
was his ... eh ... this was his big move. But he only carried it maybe so far, 
and ... ehm ... took a long time, I think, for ... ehm ... people to come back 
to it and use it again.

18:03:23 KODWO ESHUN And HYPE WILLIAMS is so precise. He is ... he is always 
taking specific aspects, just very, very precise aspects. He's making a ... he's 
quoting them, he's making a homage to them, but then he's translating it, 
because it's in a reflection. And then, by now, it has a different aspect, 
because now ... ehm ... do you remember that video from ... ehm ... that 
CHEMICAL BROTHERS video, which is all shot in the mirror, and where the ... the 
girl ... the girl figure is multiplying through the mirrors ... ehm ... Now, 
that's an amazing video. Now it feels like JOHN PAUL [???] fits into that world, 
this ... the mirror world ... ehm ...

18:03:54 KODWO ESHUN One of my favorite quotes is from ROBERT SMITHSONS, talking 
about the mirror world, just the Alien world of reflections and refractions and 
multiple images coming back. And this ... this CHEMICAL BROTHERS video really 
does that well. Because ... ehm ... this girl keeps on moving from the mirror 
world into the real world ... where she keeps on falling out of one world into 
the other. And the reflections don't look like ... they look like they can 
achieve an autonomy from her, they look like they can come towards her and 
menace her in some way. That's really amazing. And [???] has that as well, she's 
very [???] in this HYPE WILLIAMS video.

18:04:33 KODWO ESHUN That's it ... yeah ... that's it ... yeah ... that's it ...

18:05:03 KODWO ESHUN [...] and you can't quite tell why. That's because they 
called the ... ehm ...

18:05:06 [Klappe]

18:05:07 KODWO ESHUN ... service sectors, they're calling the service sector the 
T-way of a giant ... of a giant apparatus. It might be a spaceship ... eh ... 
some kind of giant mechanistic system. And they're calling the service ... 
services of it, the, kind of ... ehm ... the T-ways, the flows, the corridors, 
the tunnels. And they're not in the main ... they're not in the main center of 
it. So they're, like ... ehm ... they're, like, part of the engine of it, and at 
the same time it's that they're extracting it. Plus, the whole service sector 
seems alive, it's animated ... ehm ... And part of it is that I think ... ehm 
... this big ... this big ... kind of system that hammers them, to me, that's an 
animation of them.

18:05:48 KODWO ESHUN The very thuggish sound of the music ... ehm ... SCOTT 
GROOVES, he's ... ehm ... he's ... ehm ... a black Scottish producer ... ehm ... 
And his influence is ... eh ... on one hand, it's PARLAMENT and FUNKADELIC, on 
the other hand, it's DAFT PUNK. That's his big inspiration, and that's what this 
track is, it's like ... ehm ... an intersection between DAFT PUNK and  samples 
from PARLAMENT and FUNKADELIC, it's like attaching the two systems. And somehow 
the violence of it really associates, with me, with the violence of the ... of 
House music. The violence, the thuggishness of the four-four.

18:06:22 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... and it's a ... it's like a way of ... ehm ... it's 
like a way of forcedly integrating the two. Because they don't ... they don't 
necessarily go. If you remember that PARLAMENT and FUNKADELIC really hated 
Disco, GEORGE CLINTON is famous for disliking it. And SCOTT GROOVES is really 
... forcing a link, though there wasn't one. He's, like, actively ... actively 
... ehm ... recombining history in a new way. And I think it's, like ... it's a 
violent system, it's a violent process when you do that. And that's what you can 
see ... ehm ...

18:06:50 KODWO ESHUN It's finally because it's, like ... ehm ... it's, on one 
hand, it's like he's putting his icons ... he's really punishing them, in a way 
... It's quite amazing. Maybe it's not a [???] influence. But it's certainly ... 
ehm ... it's certainly this desire to see if they can stand up to punishment. I 
think what is ... it's partly that ... ehm ... that House music is a punishing 
environment, and: can these icons last? He ... it's like he has to put them 
through a whole series of tests in order to make them work. And partly, the ... 
they're not human, they're like icons or avatars or ... or the ... the 
functioning parts of a big system that he wants to build.

18:07:26 KODWO ESHUN And in order to get the engine to work, he has to be really 
forceful about it. The whole thing is very industrial and brutal, and at the 
same time it's very spacey. It's very dark, dark green. It's everything moving 
really fast ... They're all making this strange, rectangular, brutalist images 
and kind of components. It's a bit Aztec, a bit like z[???], they're all made 
intentionally blocky, they're made out of, like, triangles, and circles. I mean, 
it could be made ... it's so much the opposite of a very smooth, liquid form. 
Everything is so brutalist, and so ... ehm ... like a ballet mechanique.

18:08:03 KODWO ESHUN Like, you look ... you go back and look at, like, LEGÈRE 
... LEGÈRE'S ballet mechanique, or you look back to ... ehm ... SATIE'S parade, 
or you go back to, like, Russian constructivist theater ... ehm ... [???]. It 
was always these humans in these giant ... these humans as giant puppets. And 
these puppets are made out of ... ehm ... out of Euklidian forms. They're made 
out of circles, they're made out of triangles, they're made out of block 
material. Like heavy material, with no fluidity or grace. Clumsy, awkward 
material ... ehm ... And ... it's really mad that he's turned ... ehm ... 
PARLAMENT and FUNKADELIC into this very blocky, constructivist movements, very 
slow and awkward and rigid.

18:08:44 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ...I think he really wants to reinvent them from now. 
But he's very clever ... that reinvention is ... eh ... reinvention is not easy 
at all, it's not fluid, it's, like, difficult and harsh. So he's testing his 
heros to see if they can ... they can function again. Because House is so harsh, 
I think. It's just a harsh, harsh video. It's bizarre. Really, maybe one of the 
most bizarre videos that you selected. Very strange. I watched it a number of 
times, it's just like ... buff!

18:09:29 It kind of comes from the white groups, or THE THIN WHITE DUKE, and 
their pop sci-fi ideas, through the JACKSONS, SCOTT GROOVES, MICHAEL JACKSON'S 
SCREAM, and JANET'S, and this strange JIMI TENOR thing, the Finnish version of 
the mothership, and SUN RA ...

[What's the name of this Austrian artist? CHRISTIAN ...]

18:10:44 Then this RESIDENTS thing ...

18:10:49 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, this collage, another ... another collage, another 
... ehm ... another, kind of ... ehm ... ehm ... archaeology of media, 
archeology of, like, science fiction media, it's, like, when you reassemble all 
the famous images of that post-war science fiction and bring them together.

18:11:11 KODWO ESHUN It's weird, because ... RESIDENTS is stranger than that 
video suggests. Like, they're really eerie, and the video wasn't.

18:11:18 Yeah, some of the videos are much more eerie, like, for instance, do 
you know SKINNY ... "Skinny was born in a bath tub in [...] and incredibly thin" 
... And they really found this guy who has this long face like this, and this 
really long nose ... A photo film, this is one of my favorites. It's much better 
than this one here. But it's kind of nice ... certain icons they use ... Maybe 
this early video ... this way of ... just cut out things being moved, and 
colorings ... like really cheap animations ... Anyway, then we have 
INTERGALACTIC, the BEASTIE BOYS one, and this ... not so great ... TONIGHT 
TONIGHT, SMASHING PUMPKINS, MELIEZ reference ...

18:12:41 KODWO ESHUN Also I'm not ... I'm not a big fan of MELIEZ, I try ... I 
try to like him, because people always ... the history of cinema, that's so 
important.

18:12:51 Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the SMASHING PUMPKINS either, so a lot of 
things come together here.

[Having in mind that we only have fifteen minutes ...]

18:14:17 Ok. Ok, SPACE ODDITY, BOWIE.

18:14:22 KODWO ESHUN Good. BOWIE'S SPACE ODDITY is ... ehm ... it's a classic 
... myth of the near future ... ehm ... So it's the transition of KUBRICK'S ...

18:14:53 KODWO ESHUN Yeah. BOWIE'S SPACE ODDITY translates KUBRICK'S SPACE 
ODYSSEY, as everybody knows ... ehm ... The key thing about this move is, it's 
... ehm ... The key thing about BOWIE'S SPACE ODDITY is its kind of lunatic ... 
ehm ... lightness, its ... ehm ... flexibility. First of all, there's a 
different version of SPACE ODDITY, it's actually different to the one that made 
it into the Top Twenty. And, second, BOWIE has this ... ehm ... innocence, and 
this naivity ... ehm ... he's wearing a T-shirt ... ehm ... when he becomes the 
Ground Control, you can see his teeth, and his teeth look really badly shaped. 
So there's, like, a charming naivity to it.

18:15:31 KODWO ESHUN And at the same time, it's the myth of the near future ... 
ehm ... there's still the emphasis on whiteness, on antisepticness, on a certain 
sterility ... ehm ... But these become very charming, and they become very ... 
ehm ... They're not alienating. They become ... ehm ... humanized. Because MAJOR 
TOM is a figure isolated in a cocoon, in his world ... ehm ... And at the same 
time, these two female figures that float around in ... these kind of BARBARELLA 
companions, they're kind of complacent, they're complacent women that are barely 
there. They're like ... ehm ... women who are there to ... ehm ... shield him 
from the ... from the rigours of his journey.

18:16:08 KODWO ESHUN But you can't see what the rigours are. He's very much a 
boy in a plastic bubble, he's very much ... ehm ... an innocent human ... ehm 
... and when Ground Control tells him that there's, like, a danger of losing 
connection, when Ground Control starts to lose connection ... ehm ... you never 
really fear for MAJOR TOM, because you feel he really wants the isolation, he 
claims the isolation ... ehm ... It's not an alienated film, because BOWIE'S 
already ... he's already giving expression to the Alien aspect of ... ehm ... of 
Pop as it existed. And at the same time, it's not even very glitter, it's maybe 
pre-glitter, it's pre-glam, it's pre DIAMOND DOGS 

18:16:47 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... and BOWIE has ... ehm ... a gentleness to him, 
which is ... eh ... really surprising. In retrospect, the whole movie looks 
massively innocent ... ehm ... Space is really a way of ... ehm ... not even 
escaping, space is a very reassuring ... ehm ... maybe in the same way that the 
Austrian architect [???] talked about a Pneumacosm, a pneumatic cosmos in which 
... ehm ... an environment could become sensitized, and an environment could 
become responsive ... ehm ... I got the feeling that BOWIE is very much at home 
in this world, and MAJOR TOM lives in it, and he could live there quite happily. 
And the outside world is shut down.

18:17:24 KODWO ESHUN That ... eh ... moment of space capsules, that moment of 
... ehm ... of ... eh ... minimum habitats, of an environment where ... you 
could reduce all your ... all your ... eh ... all your needs, and all your 
desires and all your longings, to a very few, to a kind of white capsule. And 
you could be sustained by it. The idea that a [???] be a room, and that this 
room could sustain you for your whole life ... ehm ... That is a very particular 
moment ... ehm ... But you can really see it there. You can see how ... ehm ... 
the space, like, the ideas of space, the way in which engineers became 
architects.

18:18:03 KODWO ESHUN The engineers who built those first space rockets and first 
space capsules. You can see the knock of the effect of that, from the space 
journey to STANLEY KUBRICK to DAVID BOWIE. You can trace this ... this journey, 
this ... this desire for isolation and longing ... ehm ... The specific aspects 
of 2001 that BOWIE adapts, these particular aspects of the ... the ... eh ... 
space ship that BOWMAN is in, that BOWMAN floats off in ... ehm ... KUBRICK'S 
set design was famous for being more expressive than the humans in it. Remember, 
in 2001, the humans are totally banal, they're so very little, they react hardly 
at all, and it's the set design that is responsive.

18:18:45 KODWO ESHUN The sets have a lot more energy, and a lot more liveliness. 
The sets are human, and the machines are drained. KUBRICK always reversed the 
... ehm ... reversed the ... the human habitat hierarchy, and the habitat is 
alive, and the humans are just functioning. And BOWIE picks this up, I think. In 
... in BOWIE'S film, the habitat has a warm sort of lightness, and that BOWIE is 
... needs it, he needs it to function. He's kind of thriving in it. If you 
imagine, if you ... ehm ... if the habitat ... ehm ... if BOWIE had to, like, 
leave the spaceship, like, open the airlock and, like, move out into the world, 
he'd instantly die.

18:19:22 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... so it has got this phobia, it has got that feeling 
of ... ehm ... being allergic to everything. If you remember the later film 
SAFE, in which the woman is allergic to the twentieth century, BOWIE also has 
this feeling, of being allergic to the ... allergic to his world, and he'd have 
to retreat from it ... ehm ... And then, there's also the aspect of ... ehm ... 
the satellite's eye view ... Because of BOWIE, from in his capsule, can look 
down on the world, and the world can't touch him. And the complexity of the 
world is reduced to a ball. So this satellite's eye perspective gives you a God-
like persona.

18:19:58 KODWO ESHUN But it's so double-edged. If you are God, on the other 
hand, you're only a God ... you're God in the universe of one. It's just you and 
your space, and that's it. As soon as this God tried to interact, you'd be in 
big trouble.

18:20:13 5:47 ...

18:20:14 KODWO ESHUN Oh ... was that five minutes?

[Vorbeifahrende LKWs ...]

18:21:53 I was just wondering whether it would be good to mention that it's 
maybe the first video clip with the issue of space ...

18:22:24 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, the video of BOWIE'S SPACE ODDITY is one of the first 
videos set in space. And you can see how it takes the energy from, on one hand, 
the actual space race, and, on the other hand, the huge impact of STANLEY 
KUBRICK'S SPACE ODDITY. You can see how the emphasis on the capsule living, on a 
set design which is a total habitat, a world which can enclose you and which can 
sustain you, and which can isolate you, you can really see the emphasis on this. 
And in a way which makes BOWIE, on one hand, a god, but on the other hand ... 
ehm ... an isolated man, a boy man, who can't function in civil society, but who 
can only function in an orbiting satellite of his own world.

18:23:09 KODWO ESHUN You can see how the impact of that is really crucial to 
Pop, because it expresses how Pop wants to be ... ehm ... a community of 
isolation. How everybody feels ... ehm ... brought together by their loneliness 
... ehm ... That's one of the significances of a film that's set in a satellite, 
that's set in a capsule ... ehm ... it's a way of visualizing, and animating, 
this sense Pop gives you of only speaking to you alone. How is it that BOWIE can 
make this song, this song is Number One, hundreds of thousands of people buy it, 
and yet, the classic Pop phenomenon is, for the song, to speak to you very 
directly.

18:23:51 KODWO ESHUN And you really feel that it ... it ... ehm ... expresses 
your isolation and expresses your divergence, and your difference, and your 
distinction. So, how do you visualize this distinction? You visualize it in 
terms of space. Because space has these aspects of escape from gravity, it has 
these aspects of artificial environments ... ehm ... it raises to a new level 
the ... ehm ... the alienation that everybody feels, and it makes you feel at 
home in it. So, it's not really alienation anymore. It's more ... it's more 
adapting to and enjoying a degree of isolation from the world. It's a way of 
feeling at home in alienation.

18:24:30 KODWO ESHUN That's really crucial. That's the big thing about Pop. It's 
always ... especially at this point, this point of ... ehm ... this point where 
the Hippie era is just dying, and the Glam, Glitter Rock era is just being born. 
SPACE ODDITY is on the ... is on the cusp, it's on the treshold between the end 
of ... ehm ... Aquarius, of WOODSTOCK, and this communal dream, and it's not yet 
in the world of Glitter Rock. Glitter Rock is ... ehm ... this aggressively 
retro ... aggressively future retro styling. If you remember ROXY MUSIC, ROXY 
MUSIC are like FLASH GORDON, on one hand, but on the other hand, they're like 
these aristocratic lizards from the future.

18:25:11 KODWO ESHUN And BOWIE is really poised between these two worlds. It's 
not collective anymore. But it's not aggressively individualistic either. He's 
like this embryonic form, just giving birth to a new shape. And the ... ehm ... 
the vulnerability of BOWIE ... ehm ... the way in which he needs these two 
figures, the girls who float around him, they look complacent, but they're not 
really, they're kind of holding him up. He needs that, because he's like an 
embryo, he's something in the form ... he's something in the process of being 
born. That's why when you're watching you hold your breath, you can't believe 
how gentle and fragile, and how ... ehm ... awkward it all feels.

18:26:06 Ok. So, we drop DAVID, and we have MAN OR ASTROMAN.

18:26:17 KODWO ESHUN I didn't know the work of this group at all. I still don't 
know their name, I don't know much about them ...

18:26:25 Musically, they're very much this kind of Surf Punk combination. They 
obviously very often have fun in recycling ...

18:26:43 KODWO ESHUN When is it from?

18:26:46 This is not so old, I believe ... I'm not sure ...

18:26:53 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, because that's fascinating, because maybe this is a 
very significant thing. Because I couldn't tell when they're from either. First 
of all I thought they were maybe from the late Eighties, then from the mid-
Eighties, maybe from the early Nineties. And maybe that's because they're 
dealing in ... ehm ... archaeology of media. So they're referencing BARBARELLA, 
they're referencing ... ehm ... what else is in there ... 2001. They're 
referencing these classic ... ehm ... classic videos. But, yes, it's not so much 
films, it's more videos, it has got ... ehm ... I remember how much ... how much 
of a difference it makes when you watch science fiction films to a video.

18:27:29 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... everything shrinks, everything becomes more 
intimate ... ehm ... the moments that pass so swiftly in the film, you can slow 
them down and analyze them. And that's because the VCR becomes parallel to a 
sampler ... ehm ... the VCR allows you to ... pause ... on set designs, it 
allows you to get completely microscopic and particular about science fiction 
films. And this video had the look of a group who had studied they're favorite 
science fiction films very closely. But it's not that they were bringing 
anything new to it. It's more that their thought process was a ... one that was 
a recombinant one. A recombinant one in which they could combine specific ideas 
in a new way.

18:28:11 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... BARBARELLA ... ehm ... which is, like ... ehm ... 
to me, is still a very [???] science fiction movie. That's particulary because 
it brings ... ehm ... a tactility to the science fiction scenario. BARBARELLA is 
the world of ... eh ... it's the world of tactility, it's the world of skin, 
it's the world of touch. It's a haptic science fiction movie. Maybe the only one 
up to this date ... ehm ... This is because ... ehm ... this female heroine ... 
ehm ... eh ... brings a certain ... a certain kind of Sixties libidinal, kind of 
charming intensity to it. It sometimes looks awkward, but actually, it's quite 
refreshing.

18:28:47 KODWO ESHUN It moves it away from hardware, essentially, and moves it 
towards a softer version of what science fiction might be ... ehm ... Science 
fiction in ist classic sense is a myth of the near future. And ... ehm ... a 
tactile future ... ehm ... I think that's a very small one, cause it means we're 
moving away from ... eh ... 2001 world, where ... ehm ... If you remember, the 
whole point about HAL is, he's supposed to be super-intelligent ... ehm ... and 
this intelligence flips over to paranoia. But if you have a future which is 
tactile, then there isn't so much intelligence, it's more empathy, and 
sensitivity. And ... ehm ... and that's very much the point of BARBARELLA.

18:29:25 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... if you remember, the male characters of BARBARELLA 
are fairly impotent. DAVID HEMMINGS with his wings, he's an ambivalent 
character. It's BARBARELLA who is the heroine. And at the same time, she's ... 
just got this extra sensitivity that enables her to ... to move through these 
... ehm ... these funny sets and this ... this strange ... ehm ... [???] 
metaphor ... ehm ... I think that's the most interesting aspect of this movie, 
the way in which they have integrated ... eh ... a BARBARELLA aspect. But they 
haven't gone for the ... for the most obvious sex symbol aspect, for the ... 
They've gone for the set design, they've gone for this tactility.

18:29:59 KODWO ESHUN And that's something ... that's something that science 
fiction still ... still ... can still use. That's not a myth of the future that 
is been used up here. Not to me. It's like SALVADOR DALI'S ideas of an 
architecture of the future. SALVADOR DALI wanted an architecture that would be 
hairy. That still hasn't been done yet. That's still some ... this ... So, 
sometimes, you have myths of the near future, myths of the ... like ... 
yesterday's versions of tomorrow. But sometimes, yesterday's versions of 
tomorrow scramble the present. Sometimes they still have an energy in the life. 
And BARBARELLA still has one. Despite everything.

18:30:33 KODWO ESHUN And maybe that's the best aspect, to bring BARBARELLA back 
into perception, to bring it back to consciousness. On the sophisticated level 
of sets as well. Not so much narrative, but set design, and ... a general 
tactile environment.

18:31:07 KODWO dritte ... [Klappe]

18:31:10 KODWO ESHUN It's a luxury version of the future. Most futures are still 
fairly dystopic. They're ... they're, sort of, futures of minimum existence. 
BARBARELLA is one of the few that's, like, lavish, luxurious, hyper-
consumptious. You see, it feels really good, and feels really ... ehm ... it 
feels different, because you're so used to seeing these quite harsh ... harsh 
futures ... where everything is less ... and harsh, and ... And BARBARELLA isn't 
like that.

18:31:38 I remember I saw it when it came out, the film, and I remember it as 
being very sexy, not only because of JANE FONDA and her outfit, but also this 
kind of flying through these cube-like ambiences, with these furry furnitures, 
and so forth. And it always seemed a little bit like a fetal, kind of flowing 
...

18:32:03 KODWO ESHUN Yeah. That ... that ... that has a lot of impact, because 
... because the future is ... people always try to make the future so ... ehm 
... dystopic, and strict, so unpleasant, really. The ... a future of 
deprivation, one in which ... ehm ... the future is bad news, really. And 
BARBARELLA isn't bad news. Maybe the only future that isn't bad news. I mean, 
the ... It's different, because most futures are bad news, but you still want to 
live in them. They make bad news good news. A g[???]. G[???] is grim, but it's 
pretty ... it's still quite enjoyable.

18:32:34 What's that?

18:32:35 KODWO ESHUN G[???].

18:32:40 KODWO ESHUN Yes. It's not so good. But anyway, it's just like a genetic 
apartheid. So ... you have the right set of ... you have the right set of DNA 
and you're fine, or you don't and you're totally out of ... you're totally out 
of the loop. So, it's a grim world, but you still want to live in it. Science 
fiction libidinizes, like, anxiety, that's what it tends to do. But ... but 
BARBARELLA is really unusual, because it doesn't libidinize anxiety, it 
libidinizes luxury. So it's ... there's a double luxuriousness, say, yeah, you 
can really feel it.

18:33:16 It's not a very good video ... I'm sure they didn't think so much about 
it then ... What do we know ... BARBARELLA ... What do we know ... 2001 ... Ok, 
lets do it ...

18:33:30 Ok, PUMP UP THE VOLUME.

18:33:31 KODWO ESHUN Oh, yes ... Yes, the video from MARRS, PUMP UP THE VOLUME 
... ehm ... takes his inputs from ... ehm ... the ... this moment of ... ehm ... 
dance music collage. This ... this moment where the ... the motor of the break, 
of the ... particularly the JAMES BROWN break, could be attached to a whole 
series of new dance music samples. So ... ehm ... the idea of ... ehm ... music 
as a global sound archive, and the idea of music as this motor that can travel 
through time and that can compress massive amounts of musical data into a very 
small space of time ... ehm ... This really impacted with a big bang ... ehm ... 
in the end of the Eighties, when PUMP UP THE VOLUME existed.

18:34:20 KODWO ESHUN And, you can similarly see the ... the ... ehm ... it's 
visualized as like a move into space, as an ... as ... as space being available. 
Space is like a resource. And not only space, but Twentieth Century ... ehm ... 
Twentieth Century stock footage of space becomes available as a resource that 
you can recombine, and ... recombine and reedit. So, the whole idea there, I 
think, is that editing becomes the ... editing visually and editing musically 
becomes the same function, so you can recombine ... ehm ... footage of space, 
space race ... ehm ... takeoffs, ascensions ... ehm ... ehm ... moments when 
space vehicles break off from each other.

18:35:01 KODWO ESHUN An entire range of post-war footage. You can recombine them 
and make them funky. You can give them a syncopation, and an energy, and a 
dynamism ... ehm ... PUMP UP THE VOLUME is kind of famous for ... for saying 
that ... Look, there's this huge archive ... of footage and sound there, you got 
fifty years of film ... ehm ... It's not a question of inventing a new film, 
it's a question of recombining an old film in new ways. It's like a classic 
Eighties recombinant film. So, it takes up the legacy of the collage, but it 
makes the collage on beat. The collage was never ... the collage never had a 
sense of beat to it.

18:35:39 KODWO ESHUN It's ... it's like ... after BURROUGHS, BURROUGHS had the 
cut-up, but cut-up never had a beat. The cut-up was always interruption. And the 
collage never had a beat. Before the Eighties, the ZAPPADELIC moment, what that 
introduced was the collage on beat. So, everything is synchronized and then 
released, and then punched, and then phased, and that gives everything a 
different dynamic energy, and gives it a new rhythmic motion.

18:36:08 Very nice. You said it, basically, but it's also one of the first times 
that they recycled documentary footage in this format. I don't know if that has 
been done before very often ... There were some political, some pseudo-political 
things, like [???] JOHNSON, for example, when he showed the Notting Hill Riots 
in his video ... and there are some much more flat versions of this, just having 
Police actions and stuff like that. But, apart from that, I think that it was 
quite pioneer, in retrospect.

18:37:05 KODWO ESHUN Yeah. Yeah, MARRS' PUMP UP THE VOLUME pioneered the 
recombination and refiguration of the media database. We'd had images from 
space, we'd had images from the news, we'd had images of politics, and we'd had 
mediated images, entire transmedia database. And our job is not to invent new 
media, it's to combine old media in a new way. And not only to combine in a new 
way, but to find a new rhythm for old media, it's to syncopate new media ... ehm 
... It's to find a dynamism in an age ... ehm ... it's to give it a funk. And 
that's quite difficult to do. It's really difficult to ... ehm ... dynamize 
music.

18:37:50 KODWO ESHUN It's ... it's easy to collage it, but it's a second step to 
give this collage ... ehm ... a danceable momentum, to make a vision of rhythm 
that nobody had seen before ... ehm ... So, suddenly it made ... ehm ... these 
images, which were maybe worn out, which were maybe used up, which had become 
cliches, which had become, like, a kind of dead material of history ... it 
suddenly revitalizes these movements. Because it's not so much each particular 
image, it's the sequences and the patterns that emerge, that's what you're 
fascinated by. You're fascinated by the arrangement of images, not the image in 
and of itself.

18:38:28 KODWO ESHUN So, you can have a dead, worn out image, but it can be 
recombined in a fascinating way. And that, it's the pattern that's fascinating. 
And that's what dance music is about, it's pattern recognition. It's not about 
... it's not only the specific tone, it's not the specific melody, it's always 
the patterns, and the recognition of patterns. And that's ... ehm ... that's a 
meta level of visual awareness, and ... ehm ... PUMP UP THE VOLUME really 
introduced that, in a big way, I think.

18:39:10 TRIUMPH ...

18:39:38 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, THE JACKSONS' CAN YOU FEEL IT video, which is also 
known as TRIUMPH, was a key video for the time. It was an event video, it was 
... ehm ... it was more like a short film than a video. And these event films 
... ehm ... they're announced long before they arrive. So, long before you 
actually saw this video, you heard about it. And once it had arrived ... ehm ... 
it lived up to it. It obviously had a spectacular budget, and its theme was 
cosmic. So, you had ... ehm ... a cosmic disco, or a space disco, in which ... 
eh ... the ... the close harmonies of THE JACKSONS, the close movements of the 
horns, the dynamic ... the dynamics of the horn movements, the stabs, the entire 
symphonic arrangement of Disco that THE JACKSONS pioneered ...

18:40:28 KODWO ESHUN This was allied to ... ehm ... a cosmic ... a cosmic ... 
ehm ... short film ... in which THE JACKSONS really took up the ideas of EARTH, 
WIND AND FIRE, which... EARTH, WIND AND FIRE had become heroes in a cosmology, a 
cosmos ... a cosmological world. And ... ehm ... THE JACKSONS introduced ... eh 
... a cosmology of sound ... ehm ... The key thing is the ... ehm ... video 
effects that allow THE JACKSONS to become incandescent ... ehm ... They become 
made of light, they illuminate their world ... ehm ... they light up the night, 
they ... they ... ehm ... they set the world on fire, they ... they just glow 
and they radiate.

18:41:06 KODWO ESHUN And all these images of illumination and enlightenment 
gives the ... ehm ... gives THE JACKSONS this feeling of being ... ehm ... 
angels, of being visitors to our world. They're not from our world anymore. But 
they arrive, and they grace us with this world. And you can see how that's very 
similar to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, which, I believe, is maybe only a year or two years 
later. And in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, of course, you have visitors who arrive, and 
they're entirely benevolent and ... ehm ... were graced by them. And in the same 
way ... ehm ... THE JACKSONS are benevolent gods, they arrive on this Earth, 
their coming was maybe announced.

18:41:46 KODWO ESHUN Like, if you listen carefully to previous JACKSONS records 
you can tell ... that they were gods, and that they were arriving. And ... ehm 
... the whole movie was set up to ... ehm ... to ... ehm ... fulfilling of all, 
and ... ehm ... Just from the way people point to the stars, to the way people's 
necks [???], to the delay ... and the way THE JACKSONS dance in the air, the way 
the dance on fire, the way they're sustained, the way they suspend the laws of 
gravity, the way they don't have any ... any ... ehm ... allegiance or links to 
earth anymore, the way they ... ehm ... become their own principle of energy, 
their self-determined energy.

18:42:25 KODWO ESHUN You can't see ... you can't see the batteries, you can't 
see the life, you just ... They're just like energy systems, powering 
themselves. That's by far the most fascinating aspect. The way in which ... eh 
... an entire series of special effects, at the time, can be harnessed in the 
... in the ... ehm ... can be harnessed in the service of an entire cosmology of 
Disco. So Disco can become the vehicle for a myth of cosmological force. That's 
really fascinating. So, even the term CAN YOU FEEL IT ... ehm ... what is "it"? 
"It" is energy, "it" is ... ehm ... "it" is ... ehm ... "it" is feeling for its 
own sake ... ehm ...

18:43:05 KODWO ESHUN And, I think, the point of that is that ... ehm ... that 
the force that THE JACKSONS incarnate is a force which is a ... which any 
JACKSONS listener can also tap into. All you have to do is to listen to yourself 
listening, it's to listen to the act of yourself listening to THE JACKSONS, and 
you can also feel some of the force. And, of course, if you remember that force 
which comes over from STAR WARS, if you remember the force in STAR WARS ... ehm 
... ehm ... LUKE SKYWALKER first feels a force when he turns off his computer 
system, and he looks within himself, and that's when he's able to feel the 
force.

18:43:43 KODWO ESHUN And that CAN YOU FEEL IT, that's all about ... ehm ... 
looking within yourself ... ehm ... looking into this ... So, it's this very ... 
so, it's really paradoxical. On the one hand, there's this giant, spectacular 
illumination of light. On the other hand, CAN YOU FEEL IT is talking about ... 
ehm ... eh ... your inner mind's eye. It's talking about ... ehm ... inner 
feelings ... ehm ... And maybe the film is the visualization of these inner 
feelings, that ... ehm ... everybody can be a God ... ehm ... They just have to 
have the ... the process, they have to have the operating system for becoming a 
god. And the key to this operating system is there, in the JACKSONS record.

18:44:18 KODWO ESHUN You just have to allow yourself to ... to understand it. So 
this move from a rational ... eh ... hardware of space in the early Seventies to 
the late Seventies, to a ... to ... ehm ... to a ... to a discourse which is 
simultaneously cosmic, spiritual and sonic ... ehm ... that's like a long 
stretch. Possibly because it's ... ehm ... THE JACKSONS are coming out of the 
African-American ... ehm ... updating of Disco, updating of Gospel ... ehm ... 
It allows the a totally different trajectory. It allows them to become Gods. But 
not Gods like the FIVE PERCENT NATION. Gods in a cosmic and Disco way. It's 
something quite different.

18:44:56 KODWO ESHUN And very touching as well, because ... ehm ... because ... 
eh ... because it didn't last very long, this moment of Cosmic Disco. It was 
maybe over in a few years.

18:45:20 I very much like this positive aspect of this good feeling ... and this 
possibility to become Gods, in a way ... And energy, yeah ...

18:46:01 KODWO ESHUN Yeah. The key aspect of THE JACKSONS CAN YOU FEEL IT which 
is also called TRIUMPH, is that Disco becomes a vehicle for a cosmology. So, THE 
JACKSONS become Gods in this cosmology of sound ... eh ... Disco becomes an 
energetic principle. If you look at the video closely, THE JACKSONS ... eh ... 
are powered by light, they illuminate the night, they light up, they set the 
night on fire, like JIM MORRISON used to say. They're full of light. And this 
light is ... is the visualization of feeling, it's the visualization of Disco 
... ehm ... Everything that is visual is the translation of internal feelings 
and internal stated of mind.

18:46:48 KODWO ESHUN This is why the ... this track is called CAN YOU FEEL IT. 
Because everything depends on first listening to the music, then feeling it, 
then listening to the sound of yourself listening to the music ... ehm ... 
identifying the feelings that you have. And the ... tapping into these feelings 
can make you like a God. But a God for four minutes. In this case, this is why 
the film is extended to twelve minutes, because what THE JACKSONS want to do is 
extend this God-like feeling to an incredible degree. If you remember the actual 
feeling ... the actual track, CAN YOU FEEL IT, is maybe four to five minutes.

18:47:20 KODWO ESHUN But this film of twelve minutes wants to sustain this 
feeling of God-like energy, wants to sustain this idea of Cosmic Disco for 
twelve minutes. So, the whole move has this unbearable endlessness to it. It's 
really ... it's really incredible. It really keeps you locked into this world. 
At the same time, you're forced to identifying with these figures on the ground, 
staring up at these Gods ... ehm ... But, there's actually a doubleness. On the 
one hand, you're staring up at the Gods, on the other hand, you can be a God. 
You just have to listen to THE JACKSONS. You have to want to feel their feeling.

18:47:56 KODWO ESHUN And this moment, where Disco could become a vehicle for 
cosmic energies, could become a vehicle for positive feelings, a vehicle for 
ascension and upliftment ... ehm ... this is a very special era. The end of the 
Seventies, the beginning of the Eighties. It was an era that wouldn't last very 
long, but ... ehm ... THE JACKSONS captured it. They captured this moment of 
Cosmic Disco in its moment of ascension, and elevation, and upliftment. And it 
captured it exactly, and ... ehm ... Yeah, it was very ... very particular to 
this era in time.

18:48:41 KODWO vierte ... [Klappe]

18:48:43 KODWO ESHUN ... you realize, this is the next nine minutes. This isn't 
... it's not the far future, it's not the future of robots and galaxies, it's 
like nine minutes from now. And that's when you get to the BALLARD ... BALLARD'S 
idea of the future, which is a really strong one. It's a way science fiction is 
a science fiction of the present. Science fiction is the science fiction of the 
next nine minutes, science fiction of nine minutes from now. So, it's now, but 
it's simultaneously the future. And that's much more disturbing, because that's 
what CLOCKWORK ORANGE taps into.

18:49:12 KODWO ESHUN So, it means that your fears and anxieties and projections, 
they're not projected onto galaxies and millenia, a far millenium, they're 
projected into right here, right now. So, that means that the future is here. 
But it's worse than we imagined. But, at the same time, if you just ... if you 
look at it closely, you perceive it and adapt to it. There is no inevitability 
... inevitability about it. You can learn to live in it, and you can move 
through it. And that's what CLOCKWORK ORANGE is about, it's about training its 
audience to live in a world ... Because all around they have moralist people 
just saying, oh, concrete is terrible, these town ... town blocks are awful, 
everything is really grim.

18:49:51 KODWO ESHUN But ... people have to live in them. And they have to, 
there is no choice. They can't leave. So, you have to live in this, and you have 
to train your perception to live in it and find things in it that you can live 
with. That's what CLOCKWORK ORANGE is about. And that's what BALLARD ... as his 
great innovation of HIGH RISE ... if you read HIGH RISE and CLOCKWORK ORANGE, 
they really go together. HIGH RISE, CRASH and CONCRETE ISLAND, they're all about 
learning to live with ... learning to love ... ehm ... the bad present, the bad 
new things, not the good future things.

18:50:20 KODWO ESHUN So, that's a very different kind of ... a very different 
kind of science fiction, the science fiction of the next nine minutes. And it's 
really ... that's really much more ... much more crucial than the myths of the 
near future, which ... the myths that are the ones like 2001. That's still more 
or less a myth. But CLOCKWORK ORANGE is something different ... eh ... That's 
kind of ... ehm ... Both are fascinating, you can tell ... you can tell if it's 
a science fiction that focuses on the first or on the second. The one that 
focuses on the science fiction on the next nine minutes is really doing 
something quite harsh and quite astonishing.

18:50:55 KODWO ESHUN The one that focuses on the science fiction of the far 
future, like the STAR WARS world, that's ... that's science fiction more as ... 
more as myth and fable, and fairytale and legend than BALLARD. And those were 
all great, but the other one is something else. That's when you're getting to an 
expanded idea of science fiction. Because a movie like SAFE, that's ... to me, 
that's a science fiction movie. This woman, she's allergic to the Twentieth 
Century. A lot of the great science fiction movies don't have a science fiction 
... they don't announce themselves as science fiction.

18:51:24 KODWO ESHUN To me, ANTONIONI, IL DESERTO ROSSO, that's science fiction. 
To me ... ehm ... ALAIN RESNAIS, LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD, that's science fiction. 
Any movie where the environment has a certain intelligence and [???] and 
coldness. Any movie where the ... where the camera angles and set designs ... 
ehm ... have like a ... ehm ... have like a kind of ... ehm ... have their own 
agenda. And any movie where the humans have a kind of low affect. That's always 
science fiction. And it's science fiction in that BALLARDIAN way, rather than 
the LUCAS way. They're kind of really different traditions. People kind of 
confuse the two a lot, I think. [???] it's because it's difficult to do the 
first, and it's easy to do the second.

18:52:07 I would have another suggestion as well, which is like the RIDLEY 
SCOTT, BLADE RUNNER version, saying, ok, it's not the nine minutes future, but 
the far future, but you have these parallel tendencies. On one hand you have 
flying taxis or really futuristic thing, but you don't have this kind of 
optimism of, like, a JAMES BOND film, or early science fiction films, where 
everything is smooth, everything is easy. It's a second question whether it 
would really be nice to have such an ambiance. But anyway, it's being  presented 
as something easy and clean where all the problems are solved. Whereas in 
CLOCKWORK ORANGE, as well as in BLADE RUNNER, you pay for the advantages the 
really futuristic, new developments with a pauperization and the falling down of 
whole  parts of towns, of conditions getting worse and worse. At the same time, 
it's like First World and Third World in one city, and that one is based on the 
other, so that parts of the society and their lifestyle is paying for the 
technological advance ...

18:53:53 KODWO ESHUN You're right. And this is the ... that was the impact of 
BLADE RUNNER. That's what made it so successful. That maybe it combined these 
two traditions. It had ... ehm ... it combined ... ehm ... a projection with a 
dystopian projection. And this dystopian projection was so detailed ... and its 
overpopulation, its metropolitan density ... eh ... at the same time as it has 
these videos the size of buildings, has air ships with advertising signs on 
them. So it combined ... ehm ... And then strange things like ... ehm ... ehm 
... the guy who invents the TYRELL CORPORATION, this incredible, strange, 
baroque structure.

18:54:32 KODWO ESHUN So, it really combined everything in this dazzling way. 
And, you're right, it enabled you to be dystopic, and yet be far ... and yet be 
in the far future as well. So, you could be realistic, and you could be 
speculative at once. And that was a great breakthrough. And that's why ... ehm 
... CHRIS CUNNIGHAM said it very well, he said BLADE RUNNER has become the 
default option for science fiction movies. That's why people in, like, the ... 
BLADE RUNNER is, like, 1982 I think, and in ... for the last 18 years, people 
have been going to BLADE RUNNER. They just cant help it. They have no choice but 
to raid BLADE RUNNER.

18:55:07 KODWO ESHUN I tend to think that THE MATRIX is maybe the first film ... 
because of its access ... because of its combination of situationism ... update 
of situationism ... eh ... digital elastic reality, and ... eh ... martial arts. 
I tend to think that THE MATRIX is the first film to come along that will ... 
has begun to break the spell of BLADE RUNNER. It's the first film that you can 
look back at and say, ok, here is a ... here is a dystopian portrait which has 
enough new elements, or it combines enough elements that you can ... you 
register a distance from BLADE RUNNER. To me, it's maybe the first in all these 
years.

18:55:48 KODWO ESHUN It's not perfect. But it doesn't have to be perfect. It 
just has to be usable. It has to be a myth of the near future that you can use 
to assemble new myths from ... ehm ... And THE MATRIX does that. I must admit 
that I'm quite relieved, because BLADE RUNNER really ... The default option 
means that the ... if ... for a long time you felt like the horizon of 
perception had been reached, and you couldn't ... you couldn't go any further, 
you couldn't go past BLADE RUNNER. It really felt like that. There is 
TERMINATOR, it felt like that as well, it felt like you were stuck at 
TERMINATOR. Suddenly, THE MATRIX feels like you can do more, to me ... ehm ...

18:56:20 KODWO ESHUN BULLET TIME, again, new speeds, new slownesses. To me, 
MATRIX and music videos work totally ... ehm ... this idea ... the idea of 
BULLET TIME, the idea of this suspended ... the idea of suspended speed, of ... 
of a ... of an event which is suspended, and at the same time you have motion 
around it. That's totally ... that's totally now. And when I say now, I mean the 
last five years. The key things of music videos are these slownesses and these 
speeds, and these combinations of tempos. There's so many videos ... ehm ... 
RONI SIZE ... ehm ... which is ... oh, there's so many in which there is a 
character that freezes, and then you have motion around it.

18:56:58 KODWO ESHUN People say it's a cliche, but not to me. I'm fascinated by 
it. And that feels very modern now. So, I'm quite relieved in a way that BLADE 
RUNNER ... that we can now say, BLADE RUNNER, that's not a myth of the future. 
Because for so long it felt like realism. And now it had become ... now it has 
become another ... another thing that we can see ... we can see ... we can 
locate in its time.


BETA 19

19:00:03 KODWO fünfte ... [Klappe]

19:00:07 KODWO ESHUN There's a scene in ... ehm ... THE MATRIX where MORPHEUS 
shows NEO, where LAWRENCE FISHBURNE shows ... eh ... KEANU REEVES for the first 
time what the ... ehm ... what the Matrix, what the simulation is like. So, if 
you remember, everything is paused, and they are walking, and, if you remember, 
he sees a red ... a woman in a red dress in the corner of his eye, and he ... 
his eye is  caught by the woman, and MORPHEUS says, ok, that was a simulation, 
that was an agent. But this scene of everybody being paused, while MORPHEUS and 
NEO walk through this world, a frozen world, that's really particular to our 
era.

19:00:46 KODWO ESHUN If you look at the photographer JEFF WALL, his tableaus are 
of a giant series of events that are all frozen ... ehm ... And THE MATRIX takes 
this JEFF WALL idea of this very cold, flat, frozen world ... and sets it in 
motion. And it has ... ehm ... it has ... ehm ... the character is walking 
through it, like investigating it. And ... eh ... ehm ... what MATRIX does is it 
investigates the processes ... eh ... investigates the invisible processes of 
reality. That's the whole point of this film ... ehm ...

19:01:18 KODWO ESHUN If you remember, NICHOLSON BAKER, the American author, at 
the beginning of the Nineties, he wrote this brilliant pornographic science 
fiction book called THE FERMATA. And THE FERMATA,    F-E-R-M-A-T-A, THE FERMATA 
is Latin for "pause". In this book ... ehm ... eh ... THE FERMATA, the character 
can pause time. He has somehow invented this ability to pause time. And as he 
pauses time, he does various pornographic things, like he takes of a woman's 
bra, and most of what he does is that he writes pornographic material, while 
everything is frozen. Then he, like, slips it into this woman's trousers or 
something, then he goes away, then he freezes time again, and then he runs off, 
and then he goes away and lets her read it.

19:02:03 KODWO ESHUN But it's ...  all these similar things, this ... They all 
show a similar fascination, THE FERMATA by NICHOLSON BAKER, JEFF WALL'S 
photographs and THE MATRIX, they show a similar fascination with combined speeds 
which, before digital technology, were paradoxical. You couldn't have a pause 
and a movement, you couldn't have suspension and movement. But ... ehm ... 
that's what the elastic reality of the soft image allows. It allows these 
simultaneous motions.

19:02:31 KODWO ESHUN And ... this is dance music. Dance music is always about 
these simultaneous speeds. You have a rhythm that's slow, you have a rhythm 
that's fast, you have a bass that's half the speed of the main beats. You have 
these three patterns moving simultaneously. Dance music has trained people, has 
trained dance music fans in appreciating time ... simultaneous speeds. And 
visuality, to me, is just catching up with dance music ... ehm ... It's no 
accident that the music video is where these things happened first. I mean, RONI 
SIZE came before THE MATRIX. JEFF WALL happened around the same time.

19:03:10 KODWO ESHUN And THE FERMATA ... FERMATA was earlier than everything, 
THE FERMATA was the earliest of all ... ehm ... Maybe literature can host it, 
because, of course, you see, literature is the most imaginal genre of all. You 
can imagine anything in literature, the boundaries ... the boundaries don't 
exist at all ... ehm ... But that's kind of fascinating to me, to suggest that 
... ehm ... that's where science fiction is now heading, towards these 
simultanoeus speeds. New speeds, new slownesses, new fermatas, new pauses. And 
the compressions of all three is what makes the music video fascinating. It's 
really ... eh ... a laboratory for these kinds of digital cinema.

19:03:51 This is an interesting issue anyway, the digital age and the 
possibilities for clips, and so forth ... So, MOTHERSHIP RECONNECTION ...

19:04:07 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, the video from MOTHERSHIP RECONNECTION by SCOTT 
GROOVES ... ehm ... came out on SOMA RECORDS, from Scotland, in the late 
Nineties. Around 97 I think. And as the title suggests, what SCOTT GROOVES does 
is to use samples and moments from the Seventies' archive of PARLAMENT and 
FUNKADELIC, and he reconnects it to the House music of DAFT PUNK. You ... SCOTT 
GROOVES is a black Scottish producer, he's extremely influenced by the ideas of 
DAFT PUNK. And, if you remember, DAFT PUNK reintroduced the Disco sample, but 
with a very heavy, almost brutal, thudding beat, which they took from RELIEF 
RECORDS and Chicago.

19:04:51 KODWO ESHUN So, you have these three aspects. You have the brutality of 
... of a DAFT PUNK bassline, you have the manic, psychedelic energy of PARLAMENT 
and FUNKADELIC ... Because PARLAMENT and FUNKADELIC weren't Funk in the JAMES 
BROWN sense, they were Funk in a psychotic, a [???] sense. That was the whole 
point of PARLAMENT and FUNKADELIC ... was that ... it was Funk made psychotic, 
made psycho ... psychedelic, made quite insane, it was Funk as a bad trip. So 
you have these two conjoining aspects. The bad trip, the psychotic funk of 
PARLAMENT and FUNKADELIC, and there's still this thuggish House of DAFT PUNK.

19:05:29 KODWO ESHUN And the music video, it's a video that is simultaneously 
funky and brutalistic. So you have these three giant personas. You have SCOTT 
GROOVES, you have GEORGE CLINTON, you have BOOTSIE COLLINS, but they are 
imagined as these giant, brutalist sculptures, they're made out of Euklidian 
shapes. They're made out of triangles, they're made out of circles, they're made 
out of blocks and squares. They're very awkward, blocky, square, clumsy Gods ... 
ehm ... They're Gods ... eh ... who fill us with ... ehm ... an unease, and 
terror, and awkwardness ... ehm ... They're very much not from this world.

19:06:06 KODWO ESHUN The whole point of MOTHERSHIP RECONNECTION was that ... ehm 
... Funk is an Alien force. Funk is no longer something that's human, Funk is 
something that comes from the outside an visits us. Funk is an alien form. And 
... what SCOTT GROOVES has done is that he has taken Funk and he has 
reconceptualized it in the image of DAFT PUNK. So, he has given Funk a thuggish, 
brutal force. And in the video ... ehm ... the ... all these figures are caught 
in the service sectors of a giant ... of a giant environment. The environment 
might be a space ship, it might be a space station, it might be a satellite.

19:06:43 KODWO ESHUN But all you see is T-ways, corridors, tunnels, airlocked 
... airlocked sections that move in and out. And what you see is a giant, 
mechanical process by which the icons ... eh ... are stabbed forcedly into the 
ground. And the brutality of this motion suggests the brutality in which ... ehm 
... which brings together DAFT PUNK and MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION, and brings them 
into our world. It suggests, like, the brutality of electronic rhythms ... ehm 
... The key point of House music, at that point, was the thud, the thud with 
3Ds, thud that ... that ... that ... that ... just extremely brutal. And this is 
what is overwhelming about it.

19:07:25 KODWO ESHUN Partly I found that it's even difficult to perceive exactly 
what is going on. It's dark, everything is shot in a dark, green, digital light. 
A light that ... a mathematical light, a light that never existed ... ehm ... 
So, yeah, it's the brutality and the giganticism, and the sense of a ... sense 
of a big ritual. But you're not sure of the implications of the ritual, the 
sense of this ritual that Gods are coming up before us, but we're not quite sure 
what it's for. These are all some of the ... kind of the aspects of this 
extremely strange and bizarre video.

19:07:57 Do you want to say something about the fact that they made sure that 
they indicated in the video that they took the samples and inspirations, and so 
forth, from the Seventies ... Right, the black and white stuff with BOOTSIE 
COLLINS with a star ... star shaped shades.

19:08:24 KODWO ESHUN There is a point in the MOTHERSHIP RECONNECTION video where 
you actually see samples from the Seventies. You see BOOTSIE COLLINS with these 
star shaped shades, you see GEORGE CLINTON with his wig. And this black and 
white moment which arises in a digital universe suggests the gap between the 
Seventies of Funk ... between the long gone seventies ... and the brutal, 
digital, animated world that ... that Punk has been abducted into ... eh ... 
It's as if SCOTT GROOVES has abducted them from this era, from this world of 
black and white and Seventies, and he's brought them into this violent, digital 
world, and he has pressed them into service.

19:09:04 KODWO ESHUN He has pressed them into a world which they're not ... in 
which they are half familiar, half not. It's like he has taken their avatar 
forms, but he's filling them with a new content. A brutal content, a content of 
... ehm ... post-Chicago electronic House music, which is thuggish, and harsh. 
It's not at all pleasant. It's more ... ehm ... it has a lot of disciplinary 
energy to it ... ehm ... I think that's a lot of the ... I think that's a lot of 
the impetus, because you can see the constrast between this black and white 
world which feels safe, and then this ... digital world which is so violent, 
it's so brutal, but you're not quite sure why, or how.

19:09:44 KODWO ESHUN Which is the experience of listening to DAFT PUNK for the 
first time ... eh ... And the song itself has this incredible ... eh ... it's 
very bright, the song has a lot of energy, it has high voices screeching, it's 
definitely looped and sampled, but it's a real ... ehm ... It's a digital storm, 
a lot of events coming at you all at once, just like the video, and you can't 
make them out.

19:10:20 I don't know if you want to refer to the issue of the mothership itself 
... DIEDRICH did it to a degree ... Do we have other points where it can be done 
easily ... This is now ... here, it's even in the title.

19:10:46 KODWO ESHUN Yeah ... ehm ... the title of SCOTT GROOVES' track, 
MOTHERSHIP RECONNECTION, refers to the PARLAMENT record MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION 
from 1974. And this was the first album in ... ehm ... a song cycle, an album 
cycle of records that PARLAMENT produced, between 1974 and 1979. And MOTHERSHIP 
CONNECTION from 1974 referred to a link made between space and ... eh ... the 
Alien, and between Funk, as a ... eh ... as an Alien force ... ehm ... What 
MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION referred to was the turning of Funk into an 
extraterrestrial life force

19:11:30 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... in the era of JAMES BROWN, Funk had been ... ehm 
... a disciplinary ... eh ... aesthetic. Funk was this very disciplined, 
rigorous music that had been collectively invented by JAMES BROWN and his group. 
But ... ehm ... by MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION, Funk had become the vehicle for a 
cosmology. A cosmology in which Funk was the property of Aliens who land on 
Earth ... ehm ... And the point is that Earth is missing the Funk. If you 
remember that also DAFT PUNK'S first ... second ever record was called DA FUNK. 
So, in the Mothership ... eh ... cosmology, Funk is missing.

19:12:06 KODWO ESHUN And the Aliens have the Funk, and the Aliens come to Earth 
to look for some new Funk ... ehm ... And the Mothership then becomes the 
updated, alienated version of classic ... classic ... ehm ... ehm ... ship ... 
eh ... iconography from the Nineteenth Century. So it updates ... ehm ... the 
slave ship idea that you can find in Spirituals, it updates maybe the images of 
the Arch that you can find in Biblical tales. But it updates it, and it 
realienates it. And it makes it ... ehm ... it gives it an extraterrestrial, 
extraterritorial value. Son now ... ehm ... this Funk which is a life force 
comes from outside of us, and returns to us.

19:12:50 KODWO ESHUN And it's all ... it's a way of ... ehm ... defamiliarizing 
... ehm ... particular ... ehm ... aesthetic ideas, and ist a way of making Funk 
strange. It's a way of estranging what's supposedly human ... ehm ... Before, 
people thought that there was nothing more human than Funk. Funk referred to 
sweat and sex and smell. And this is all ... these are all the classic 
definitions of Funk. But once you get to the MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION, Funk becomes 
something Alien, it becomes much closer to, say ... ehm ... eh ... In DAVID 
BOWIE'S MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, if you remember, DAVID BOWIE ... THOMAS NEWTON 
comes to Earth because Earth has ... because his planet has run out of water, so 
he has to come to Earth to get some water.

19:13:33 KODWO ESHUN That ... that's what Funk turns into. With MOTHERSHIP 
CONNECTION, Funk is more like this precious resource. In the same way that 
Aliens come to Earth to harvest ... harvest ... ehm ... semen, or harvest ... 
ehm ... eggs, and take them back to Earth ... take them back to their planet to 
build new humans. In the way that Aliens carry out operations on humans ... ehm 
... when they have Alien abductions. That's kind of what GEORGE CLINTON wanted 
to do. He wanted to ... ehm ... he wanted to abduct humans into a cosmology.

19:14:03 KODWO ESHUN A cosmology which he assembled from (a) tradition of Funk, 
(b) the Bermuda Triangle, (c) certain JAMES BROWN ideas, (d) ... what was he 
into ... he was also into subliminal messages, the hidden persuaders ... he had 
a whole series of sources. And he just assembled them all into his cosmology. 
So, it's Funk as a cosmology, Funk as a vehicle, for ... ehm ... Alien 
abduction, and mutation, Funk as a connecting point between the pasts of 
African- American music and its synthetic future.

19:14:38 KODWO ESHUN That's a bit long ... That's because it has become endless 
...

[Won't get the rights to show DAVID BOWIE, it's too expensive ...]

19:15:55 Ok. Next one would be SCREAM, already.

19:16:01 KODWO ESHUN Yeah ... ehm ... SCREAM is a video ... ehm ... from MICHAEL 
JACKSON, with his sister JANET JACKSON ... ehm ... This ... eh ... this point in 
the late Nineties where JACKSON was ... ehm ... on the [???] from a whole series 
of accusations ... eh ... a whole series of ... ehm ... pressures which put his 
public persona as this ... ehm ... as one of the key figures in ... ehm ... kind 
of post-war Disco ... ehm ... the key figures in Eighties and Nineties music ... 
that put his persona under a great threat. And you can see in SCREAM ... ehm ... 
you can see him retreat to this stainless steel ... ehm ... space station in 
which to ... in which he answers his critics.

19:16:39 KODWO ESHUN And the key thing though is the way he takes on ... ehm ... 
an Anime persona ... ehm ... in a way which ... As we know, MICHAEL JACKSON was 
already a Cyborg ... ehm ... He was already ... through plastic surgery, he had 
already attained a point which was no longer African-American, but not white 
American either. He was this particular plastic figure ... eh ... a figure which 
had never been seen before ... ehm ... neither African-American nor white, nor 
Asian, some other, particular prototype of ... eh ... of an extremely ... 
extremely ... ehm ... rich person, a person who is really ... ehm ... like 
people like CHER, and like MADONNA.

19:17:15 KODWO ESHUN These are corporations, they are the embodiment of 
corporations, and ... eh ... only a corporation can afford this kind of ... ehm 
... plastic mutation, and this kind of plastic modification ... ehm ... So, 
JACKSON is already a Cyborg figure, and in this figure, and in SCREAM, he takes 
on a second persona ... eh ... he takes on Anime. There's ... eh ... certain 
points where his eyes, like, seem wider. I kept on ... eh ... because it's 
moving quite fast ... ehm ... I couldn't work out ... I often couldn't work out 
whether he was hallucinating his Anime persona. But I'm sure it's there. His 
eyes are wider, his eyebrows seem different ... ehm ... his sister's as well.

19:17:50 KODWO ESHUN And ... eh ... they all have this ... they all have the 
cute ... the cute menacing aspect of Japanese Anime figures ... ehm ... In their 
tight black ... ehm ... their tight black costumes, and their agility and their 
movement, there's certain points in which they move up the walls of their 
environment ... ehm ... These points where the whole video shifts his axis ... 
ehm ... This was something that HYPE WILLIAM was going to do ... eh ... a lot, 
later on. If you remember TLC'S NO SCRUBS, there's a point where TLC also scale 
the walls of their environment. But this is earlier on. SCREAM is about ... ehm 
... late Nineties, 96 or 97, I believe ... ehm ...

19:18:30 KODWO ESHUN And it has the look of a ... like, a massive budget. It has 
like a ... maybe the most ... one of the most expensive videos, certainly at 
that time ... ehm ... So, this space ship scenario is used to express a lot of 
anger, to answer all his critics ... ehm ... a mixture of justification and 
paranoia, a mixture of anger and resentment ... ehm ... frustration, 
defensiveness ... ehm ... all these ... all these ... ehm ... emotions are 
combined. And it's like ... it's as if the ... ehm ... it's as if all these 
emotions converge on JACKSON to further mutate him, to push him along further 
more, into ... into half plastic Cyborg, half digital Anime character.

19:19:12 KODWO ESHUN And his sister, she joins in ... joins in with him, which 
is a rare, rare ... as far as I know, it never happened again ... in which JANET 
JACKSON joins forces. And the two of them have this affect of being two Anime 
mutants ... ehm ... haunted by the world, forced to retreat into the expensive, 
plutocratic ... eh ... fantasy retreat from which they can launch this, like ... 
eh ... this, like, huge ... ehm ... kind of tirade of ... of anger, and ... eh 
... of righteous indignation at the world that's mistreated them so badly ... 
ehm ... But they have this air of being two mutants ... eh ... haunted by a 
world that doesn't understand them.

19:19:55 KODWO ESHUN And ... eh ... the Anime ... Anime is very good for that, 
because ... ehm ... Anime as we know from AKIRA to GHOST IN THE SHELL, is always 
about ... ehm ... mutants, it's always about ... ehm ... different species who 
initially think they're human, but it turns out not to be. And they are odds 
with human. So, the difference between, say, black and white and Asian is 
canceled and replaced by the difference and the antagonism between human and 
mutation. And ... eh ... eh ... JACKSON takes this on ... ehm ... His ... his 
enemies ... his enemy isn't any particular group, or any particular racial 
group, it's all of us.

19:20:01 KODWO ESHUN It's, like, us who have misjudged him, and misunderstood 
him, and we haven't given him a chance. So, it's very defensive, and it's very 
... ehm ... it's very ... ehm ... wounded at the same time.

19:20:43 I just remember, you were talking about this kind of splendid isolation 
of DAVID BOWIE. And here, it's a different kind of isolation. Maybe ... do you 
want to make some speculation?

19:20:55 KODWO ESHUN Yeah. In BOWIE'S SPACE ODDITY ... ehm ... the space capsule 
... ehm ... nurtures him. It's ... eh ... a womb that makes his ... eh ... 
isolation, and his alienation, it ... ehm ... it comforts him, and it ... ehm 
... it acts as ... ehm ... an externalized womb, it a womb in the shape of a 
capsule. In the case of MICHAEL JACKSON, and JANET ... JANET JACKSON, this 
isolation is more like an incubator in which you can brood. It's as if, before 
the video starts, he's been brooding, brooding on his ... ehm ... brooding on 
his fate, brooding on how he's been misunderstood. An when the camera comes on, 
he launches into action ... ehm ... determined.

19:21:36 KODWO ESHUN And also, it's much like ... now, he's in his expensive 
luxury capsule, it's much like ... You're in my world now, and you are forced to 
listen to me ... eh ... you can't leave my world, I'm going to tell you 
anything, all the terms I have in mind. It's very much an environment that he 
controls. BOWIE ... you don't feel like he's the ... you ... you feel like he's 
the God of his world, but it's such a small and closed world. In JACKSON'S, you 
get the feeling of endless spaceships and tunnels and walkways and corridors, 
and he controls it all. And this is the key thing, that he can control a world 
which has slipped out of his range.

19:22:09 KODWO ESHUN Back in the world of ... back in the world of urbanism, in 
the world of traffic, in the world of media ... ehm ... everything is out of his 
control. There, he can't control a damn thing. But here, it's ... everything is 
... it's a super-controlled world. The high-gloss, black and white finish of it, 
the shininess of it ... ehm ... is again giving this sense of ... eh ... 
mutation, this sense that it's operating at a ... eh ... the sense that it's 
operating with a speed, and a gloss, and a finish, and a surface that's nearer 
to metallic than it is to human ... eh ... JACKSON is at home in a metal world, 
he's at home in a black and white world which is high-gloss.

19:22:45 KODWO ESHUN And it's not our world, that's to say, now everything is on 
his terms. And we can sit there, we ... we have no option than to sit there and 
listen to him ... tell it like it is, explain everything ... eh ... So ... ehm 
... it's fascinating, because he's so righteous. He's ... he's screaming, his 
hair is flying, his eyes are ... he's giving you this ... a thousand yards 
stare, his eyes are fluorescent, his eyebrows are curled ... ehm ... He's ... 
ehm ... back to burn ... eh ... It's ... it's him as the revenging ... it's him 
as the revenging angel ... ehm ... What is he defending? He is defending his 
reputation and his persona, he is defending the end of an era in which ... ehm 
... he could take his reputation for granted. But now, he can't take it for 
granted, he has to come out, defending it, and fighting it ... ehm ...

19:23:38 YEAR OF THE APOCALYPSE, JIMI TENOR, the Finnish version ...

19:23:44 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, JIMI TENOR is ... ehm ... a ... ehm ... he's a 
composer, a producer, a keyboard player, from ... ehm ... SÄKHÖ RECORDS, in 
Finland. SÄKHÖ means, I believe, "electricity", in Finnish ... ehm ... And JIMI 
TENOR is ... ehm ... eh ... his persona is halfway between [???] and ... like, 
the kind of ... ehm ... like, the kind of adopted son of SUN RA. And also ... 
ehm ... he has also lots of affinities with ... ehm ... GEORGE CLINTON and 
PARLAMENT ... ehm ... On his first WARP album, INTERSTATE, he's always quoting 
... eh ... GEORGE CLINTON. But in this film, in YEAR OF THE APOCALYPSE ... ehm 
... so, it's obviously set in the last year of the Twentieth Century, he's very 
much making a homage to SUN RA.

19:24:30 KODWO ESHUN Clear ... it's a very affectionate homage ... ehm ... which 
transplants a moment in SPACE IS THE PLACE, where SUN RA lands in Oakland, and 
SUN RA emerges in Oakland with ... ehm ... these Egyptian Goddesses. He emerges 
with these women either side of him, and they have... ehm ... Egyptian godheads. 
So, one is dressed as HORUS, one has a hawk-head, another one is a NUBIS, and 
she has a juggle head ... eh ... And JIMI TENOR transplants this entire 
cosmology, SUN RA'S ... ehm ... astro-black mythology, transplants it to some 
... to a god-forsaken bit of Finland, and ... ehm ... he banalizes it, he makes 
it more banal, he makes it more down to Earth.

19:25:12 KODWO ESHUN And at the same time, it's very affectionate, and ... ehm 
... the two characters with their blank, kind of placid, kind of unimpressed 
faces, and JIMI TENOR, who is like ... ehm ... a charming, kind of slightly 
absent-minded figure ... ehm ... He has none of the ... ehm ... he has none of 
the desperatism of SUN RA, and he has none of the world historical aspect of SUN 
RA. The whole point of SUN RA is ... ehm ... space, for SUN RA, isn't a 
metaphor. It's a transvaluation. It's the ... it's the idea he uses to 
transvaluate African-American, and therefore American, and therefore European 
history.

19:25:48 KODWO ESHUN It's not a metaphor for escape. It's the turning point from 
which you can see that what you thought was black history is white mythology. 
Therefore, you can destroy black myth ... therefore, you can destroy black 
history, therefore you can destroy white mythology, and you can put your own in 
its place. So, it's a very powerful idea, it's a transvaluated project. It's not 
a metaphor or an analogy, it's the point of destruction, and the point of 
reconstruction.

19:26:18 KODWO ESHUN And JIMI TENOR'S is quite different from this. It's a much 
more relaxed, much more homely idea. But his identification with SUN RA, and his 
identification with ... ehm ... SUN RA'S persona ... ehm ... it's ... ehm ... 
it's ... it's low-key. Because ... ehm ... the Finnish landscape is so, kind of 
... ehm ... it's so, kind of ... ehm ... it's not bleak, it's deserted, but it's 
not bleak, it's kind of ... it's kind of ... ehm ... Everything is low key, and 
home made, and do-it-yourself, and ... ehm ... So, JIMI TENOR arrives, but he 
doesn't do very much, he kind of stands around, kind of looks around a bit, 
these girls look around a bit, and then the camera goes back. And that's it.

19:16:01 KODWO ESHUN So, everything has this anticlimactic gentleness ... ehm 
... Everything has ... ehm ... actually, a very English, kind of low-key aspect 
to it ... ehm ... I never really suspected ... I never really realized, but, to 
me, the Finnish and the English maybe have lots of affinities. Everything is 
low-key, and, like, low-affect. Whereas ... ehm ... SUN RA'S project was world 
historical, and gigantic, and messianic. JIMI TENOR isn't messianic at all. So, 
everything is ... everything is reversed, but in a gentle way ... ehm ... So, 
he's not ... ehm ... he's not satirizing SUN RA. It's like a gentle homage. And 
the cleverness of it is, by staying within the limits of the gentleness, he 
doesn't attempt to take on a messianic identification, doesn't take on world 
historical events.

19:27:45 KODWO ESHUN It's like ... ehm ... it's like a UFO landing in 
Woolworth's. You know, it's like ... eh ... it's like a space ship landing on a 
carpet. Everything is, like, domesticated, and shrunken, and made intimate. And 
it's very charming. Because, of course, the track, YEAR OF THE APOCALYPSE, is 
... ehm ... is JIMI TENOR ... ehm ... making audible ... ehm ... all those 
anxieties, all those apocalyptic anxieties. And I got ... I think ... ehm ... 
the video is reassuring ... in saying, yes ... eh ... according to many 
calendars, there's a crisis on the way, but ... ehm ... but, look, here come the 
Gods, and the Gods are nothing to fear, so why fear the calendar. Don't fear the 
[???], don't fear the calendar.

19:28:31 What I always thought when I saw this video is that, probably, Finnish 
people feel a little Alien to the world. And also, they're particularly 
perceived as being Alien, due to their language. I don't know if you've ever 
heard Finnish music. It's terrible! It's a hurt to the ear.

19:28:55 KODWO ESHUN Are you talking about Finnish Death Metal? Or which kind of 
Finnish music are you talking about?

19:28:59 KODWO ESHUN I heard Finnish popular music, in the early Seventies. And 
it's worse than Dutch. It's ... CHRÖ-NE-PRO-LAAR ... you can't really hear this, 
it's a pain in the ear ...

19:29:24 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, part of the ... ehm ... part of the intimacy and 
cleverness of the JIMI TENOR video is that, in the contemporary European pop 
landscape ... ehm ... Finnish music still holds the place of the Alien. It feels 
far from the edge, on the icy, north, far-north edge of Europe. And this 
identification with the Alien is a way of making this Alien positioning. It's a 
way of bringing it into the interior ... ehm ... JIMI TENOR is clever. He 
assumes the ... the SUN RA mythology is one that's known throughout Europe. He 
assumed that, and he assumes that ... he can take it on, and everybody will 
understand that by identifying with SUN RA ...

19:30:05 KODWO ESHUN It's not ... anything as boring as an appropriation. It's 
quite the opposite. It's more like a becoming-minority of SUN RA ... ehm ... He 
knows for well that SUN RA has a ... important place in, kind of, European 
thought, to this point. And ... ehm ... and it's like ... So, how can ... how 
can you ... invent a Finnish persona that everybody understands, and make these 
points. And how can you do it quickly, because it's a music video, you've only 
got four minutes. I'll adopt this world historical figure. But then in ... then 
in this very low-key, very ... ehm ... anti world historical, very domestic way. 
And in this way, you can make these very clever points

19:30:43 KODWO ESHUN Especially because the music is all the time making these 
big point about the calendar, and the century, and the fin-de-siècle. But the 
video is making another point. So this junction between the bombast of the music 
and the intimacy, the do-it-yourself way of the video, the way ... the way like 
the space ship looks like. It's put together with [???] tape, and cardboard ... 
ehm ... This whole aspect is very important ... eh ... It's low-key, and ... ehm 
... low-tech.

19:31:15 Also, what I remembered, I was always reminded of the KAURISMÄKI films. 
And particularly the perception of the one actor who unfortunately died two 
years ago or so, his main actor ... I always perceived him, and these actors, 
these characters in these films as also very Alien, very strange. Maybe this is 
not so important, but the aesthetics of the video, it reminds me of the 
aesthetics of the KAURISMÄKI films, in a way ...

19:31:51 KODWO ESHUN I never thought it was Alien. I always thought those ... 
the characters ... ehm ... as ... ehm ... as a bit glum. Not ... borderline 
depressive, not all ... not manic depressive, but like a low-level depression, 
low affect, heavy set, like, heavy jowls. They slump, they have a low center of 
gravity, maybe they don't have much energy level. You can't imagine them running 
around, or you can't imagine them doing choreography. You can't ... [laughter] 
... They don't say very much. They ... everything is ... they ponder a lot, they 
chew over an idea, and then they'd, like, lay out a few words, they're quite 
mazily with their words.

19:32:28 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, I thought of this. The two characters, especially. 
The way in which ... ehm ... There is this really funny scene early on ... ehm 
... ehm ... when he goes back to his apartment, when he goes back to his 
apartment ... so, it's a very close encounter, they just had a close encounter, 
right, so, they're going back to their apartment. But ... ehm ... if you 
remember, in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, when ... ehm ... ehm ... the main character ... 
ehm ... what's his name again, RICHARD ... ehm ... ehm ... ehm ... ehm ... ehm 
... the main character in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, he goes back to his apartment, and 
he's ... he's ... ehm ... he ... he's totally alienated from his family, he 
spends all his time building a mountain in different shapes, and potato, and 
different kinds of things.

19:33:03 Is it RICHARD DREYFUS?

19:33:04 KODWO ESHUN Yes. RICHARD DREYFUS, yeah. The RICHARD DREYFUS character 
goes back to his home, and he spends all his time building the mountain that the 
UFO would land on, out of potatoes and everything. And these guys go back, and 
they do the same thing. They start, like, repeating the ... they start repeating 
the ... ehm ... images, the place where the space ship landed. But it's all so 
low-key, and so low-tech, and so, kind of, flat, yeah, the affect is so flat. 
And that's what makes it really funny. They'd just seen this ... they just had a 
close encounter, like of a third kind, not the first or the second. This is like 
an ... a life-changing experience.

19:33:37 KODWO ESHUN But they're still back at home, still, like, in their home, 
and their wife still doesn't understand them, or she's kindly ... So this 
domestic, very domestic, very low-key aspect is kind of crucial to it, I think. 
It's kind of sweet. It's very charming.

19:33:52 Do you maybe want to say a little bit about SUN RA, because you might 
have to explain a little bit about him, because he's not that known in Germany 
...

19:34:02 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, the film ... eh ... YEAR OF THE APOCALYPSE ... ehm 
... references the African-American Jazz composer SUN RA ... ehm ... who died in 
the mid-Nineties, and who used Jazz as a vehicle for a series of cosmologies. 
Cosmologies that were worked out in his albums, in his stage performances, and 
in his particular attention to electronic technology. SUN RA is especially 
famous for integrating synthetic technologies, synthesizers, keyboards ... into 
Jazz music ... ehm ... At the same time, he has also influenced ... he is also 
important for introducing percussion, introducing extremely complex, 
polyrhythmic structures into Jazz.

19:34:47 KODWO ESHUN So, these two impulses, on the one hand, synthesizers, and 
keyboards, and, on the other hand, polyrhythm and extreme percussion, kind of 
polarized Jazz, totally changed the shape of it, made it extremely complex 
music. And ... eh ... allowed it to become the vehicle for an extreme cosmology 
which linked aspects of the past ... ehm ... to aspects of the future. So, on 
the one hand, you had the space race ... eh ... and you had the whole imagined 
solar systems of planets, the planets Plutonia, Nubia. On the other hand, you 
had a fascination with the despotic system of Egypt, and the Pharaos ... ehm ...

19:35:24 KODWO ESHUN And SUN RA'S ... ehm ... key breakthrough was to make these 
identifications, with Egypt from the past, on the one hand, and space, on the 
other hand ... was to make Jazz a vehicle for moving in these two directions at 
once. And he kept on reinventing these two directions. So, you have these four 
poles. You have percussion, you have synthesis, you have Egypt, and you have 
space. And these four poles can become the vehicles for a whole cosmology which 
you can reinvent over time. And he did it from ... eh ... from the Fifties to 
the Nineties, over two hundred albums.

19:35:57 KODWO ESHUN And with his group of musicians, THE ARKESTRA ... eh ... 
this group of twenty-one horn musicians ... and you can hear that THE ARKESTRA 
is a conjunction of the Arch and "orchestra". So, it's the idea that listen to 
SUN RA is boarding THE ARKESTRA, and going for a journey through the sound 
worlds of his records with his ARKESTRA. THE ARKESTRA is a vehicle, and 
listening is an imaginative projection into the sound world of their records. 
So, you go with THE ARKESTRA, and you go for a journey through the cosmology of 
his records.

19:36:32 KODWO ESHUN And ... ehm ... this was SUNS RA'S key idea, to 
conceptualize Jazz as a vehicle for ... eh ... internal communication, which 
then could add and take away aspects as you wanted. You could add poetry, you 
could add philosophy, you could add song titles, as Jazz became this system for 
a very complex ... idea of thinking.

19:36:54 And SPACE IS THE PLACE ...

19:36:56 KODWO ESHUN Yeah ... ehm ... SUN RA'S SPACE IS THE PLACE was a film 
made in 1972, made from a particular album by SUN RA. SUN RA conducted at least 
three versions of SPACE IS THE PLACE, as a particular, twenty minute form of 
music ... ehm ... And SPACE IS THE PLACE is a particular movie which joins 
Blaxploitation themes of the era ... so that would be, for instance, the 
emphasis on Pimps and players, so that's the emphasis on ... ehm ... particular 
Pimp figures, with [???] hats, and sharp ... eh ... sharp clothes, and very 
stylish, but at the same time quite predatory characteristics ... with, again, a 
cosmological theme.

19:37:39 KODWO ESHUN So, in SPACE IS THE PLACE, you have a Pimp character, but 
he's not exactly a Pimp, he's more like the Devil, or the Antichrist, or the 
anti principle. And this Pimp figure is playing with SUN RA for the fate of the 
planet. And they play this giant card game, and the winner of the card game 
holds the fate of the Earth in his hands. So, this cross-section, this 
transplanting of Blaxploitation themes with cosmological themes ... ehm ... this 
is one of the main ... eh ... drives of SPACE IS THE PLACE. And the, the whole 
film goes through the ... the impetus of it, goes through ... It narrativizes 
this cross-section, and then you see what happens.

19:38:20 KODWO ESHUN But ... ehm ... it points out that ... ehm ... SUN RA'S 
interest in ... ehm ... world historical themes ... ehm ... Even that SUN RA, at 
his time, was a ... eh ... and still is, extremely experimental and advanced. He 
always saw music as a ... as a vehicle that had huge implications. He always saw 
his music as a ... as a point for exploration on the widest possible level ... 
ehm ... So, he wanted to ... ehm ... reinvent history in the most radical way 
possible ... ehm ... And it's quite clear now, at the end of this ... at the ... 
the end of one century and the beginning of the other, that SUN RA is a major 
composer, a major Twentieth Century composer, whose main themes and 
preoccupations have really ... barely been understood ... ehm ...

19:39:04 KODWO ESHUN There's more than two hundred records ... ehm ... to be 
listened to carefully, and analyzed. And it's clear that the Twenty-first 
Century will be ... ehm ... studying SUN RA much closer than the Twentieth 
Century did.

19:39:20 So, shall we proceed to THE RESIDENTS then ...

19:39:27 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... THE RESIDENTS ... THE RESIDENTS ... ehm ... a 
Californian group of artists who adopted a persona in which giant eyeball-heads 
... ehm ... concealed their identities. And to this day, maybe between twenty-
five and thirty years of musical performances, to this day, there is no existing 
pictures of what THE RESIDENTS really look like. So they wear these giant red 
eyeballs, and ... ehm ... a tuxedo ... ehm ... a kind of a dining jacket, with, 
like ... ehm ... tails and trousers. Very spiffy, and very eerie, very 
mysterious.

19:40:05 KODWO ESHUN And ... ehm ... their video ... ehm ... EARTH VS. THE 
FLYING SAUCERS, to me, this is another example of archaeology of media. This is 
another example of ... eh ... a video which combines the ... ehm ... the 
assorted database of images. As the century closes, media piles up. If you 
imagine media as a natural resource ... ehm ... media is piling up all around 
us. Visual media, audio media, sound media, data, information, giant banks, 
giant ... giant databases, giant resources ... ehm ... And just as... ehm ... 
in the Seventies and early Eighties ... ehm ... resources like coal and oil and 
gas were starting to run out ... ehm ...

19:40:47 KODWO ESHUN To me it's no mistake that, at this point, recording media 
... ehm ... developed in sophistication. Such that the excess of media resources 
became very clear. Just as natural resources were starting to run out, the 
excess of media resources became really obvious. And ... ehm ... it's at this 
point where a very ... very particular performance like ... like THE RESIDENTS 
can use ... their still basic recording technology to totally ... ehm ... to 
totally recombine and reconfigure this media base in new ways. Especially to ... 
especially media that looks ... media that was ignored, media that didn't have 
... ehm ... didn't have ... didn't come with ... ehm ... with value attached to 
it.

19:41:32 KODWO ESHUN So that space media, but specifically trashy space media, 
B-movie media ... ehm ... monster movie media, media that looks poor ... ehm ... 
Maybe this is why THE RESIDENTS use a particularly low-technology animation. 
They use ... they're using collage, they're using cut-outs of figures, 
everything is used in the most ... ehm ... most low-key and most low-tech of 
ways. But ... ehm ... you can always use low-tech means to suggest and imply 
something much greater. And ... eh ... the way they used ... the way they used 
old media, and old methods of processing it, suggests that ... ehm ... they 
valued everything.

19:42:15 KODWO ESHUN Because, of course, the whole thing about old media is that 
they're time intensive. It takes ages to do these things that look very shoddy 
and very crappy. It takes much longer. So ... ehm ... THE RESIDENTS were all 
about restoring value on things, and they were all about taking things away from 
themselves. So, they were never at the heart of their cosmologies. But these 
cosmologies are random ones, kind of, like ... ehm ... maybe updated coach 
fitters. And it's clear that they [???] knew their Twentieth Century art history 
very well. But they left art. They left art for the world of media.

19:42:45 KODWO ESHUN And not only for the world of media, the world of trashy 
media, the world of B-grade media ... ehm ... But they [???], because they 
stayed with the B-grade media, it's like ... ehm ... B-grade ... ehm ... a B-
grade message for a B-grade medium. And that's the ... that's one of the ideas 
of it. The ... the ... ehm ...

19:43:19 KODWO ESHUN Yeah ... ehm ... the key thing, I think, for THE RESIDENTS 
is that ... eh ... media has piled up. There's a stockpile of old media. So, how 
do you reinvent old media, or how do you recombine it in new ways? Especially B-
grade media that has no value and has no ... ehm ... has no intensive affect 
joined to it ... ehm ... What do you do? You find a B ... B-grade method of 
combining it ... ehm ... Because these B-grade methods are more like craft than 
they are like technology ... ehm ... so ... And craft demands masses of time, it 
demands massive input ... input and investment ... ehm ... And at the same time, 
it always looks quite bad.

19:43:59 KODWO ESHUN So, this whole ... this video is forcing you to look at 
images that look quite poor, and they look quite bad. But as you look closer, it 
becomes quite clear that there's something very smart going on. Because the 
combinations ... eh ... work in an eerie way. It's like ... ehm ... science 
fiction is a big trash pile of old anxieties, and old horrors, and old fears. 
And these old fears terrorized past generations. But what terrorized the last 
generation is funny for the next generation ... ehm ... My parents' fears and my 
... eh ... my ... my parents' nightmares are my jokes, and my nightmares would 
be my ... my children's jokes.

19:44:40 KODWO ESHUN And THE RESIDENTS make a joke out of Americans' fear, of 
American fear of nuclear ... nuclear contamination, American fear of mutation, 
American fear of monstrosity, American fear of communism. All these [???] fears 
that we laugh at now, we can only laugh at them because we're born so much later 
... ehm ... And THE RESIDENTS were part of a whole era, I think, in the American 
Seventies and Eighties, which was about ... ehm ... taking cold war fears and 
re-laughing at them, and dismissing them. So, it's a way of being anti-American 
without being ... without being didactic, in the sense of having to go and have 
a march.

19:45:19 KODWO ESHUN It's a way of being anti-American through your method, 
through your process, rather than through actually didactically stating it. It's 
the way of saying that, like, that ... ehm ... your ... ehm ... your nightmare 
is my ... your nightmare is my ... is my ... your nightmare is my security ... 
ehm ... What you're afraid of is what I enjoy. It's what I go to bed with, it's 
my Teddy bear ... ehm ... And especially because of their craft aesthetic, which 
means really working with these old images, really handling them in a really 
rough way.

[There aren't that many space videos, strangely enough ...]

19:46:42 INTERGALACTIC ...

19:48:08 KODWO ESHUN The BEASTIE BOYS video for their track INTERGALACTIC is ... 
ehm ... a key video, because it shows the fascination for Japanese robot science 
fiction movies, giant robot movies, giant robot television of the Fifties and 
the Sixties ... ehm ... If you remember, in the begining, you see the BEASTIE 
BOYS ... ehm ... striking these kind of constructivist engineer poses, very 
diagonal, very geometric ... ehm ... And then, at a certain point, this giant 
robot appears, and ... eh ... this giant robot, it's being piloted, it's being 
steered by the BEASTIE BOYS who are scientists, like inside the machine. This 
robot goes on the rampage through a city ...

19:48:49 Sorry to disturb you, but it starts ... it's a space ship first. They 
fly in the space ship, but once it touches down to earth,  then it becomes a 
robot.

19:49:07 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, in the video for INTERGALACTIC ... ehm ... the giant 
robot, this giant Japanese robot, starts off as a space ship. As it's a space 
ship, it flies through a universe which is obviously ... ehm ... transparently 
artificial and made up. It's a universe made with strings and cardboard. And the 
robot flies through this cardboard cosmos ... cardboard universe, and lands in 
the city, steered by these scientists, and he goes on the rampage ... ehm ... 
The key thing about ... ehm ... the fifties era of giant robot movies is that 
they ... eh ... adapted Japanese ... eh ... TV audiences to the ... ehm ... 
atrocities, to the ... ehm ... nuclear annihilations that they'd just suffered 
... ehm ... a decade before ... ehm ...

19:49:55 KODWO ESHUN And ... eh ... this ... the atomic era, and the ... all the 
atomic anxieties, and the atomic mutations that went in the wake of Hiroshima 
and Nagasaki, these were always played out in giant ... giant robot movies ... 
ehm ... Giant robot movies were always destroying cities, over and over again, 
and ... ehm ... This world of destruction is simultaneously a world of 
construction ... ehm ... If you've already suffered destruction, then the 
repeated playing out of destruction, the repeated playing out of trauma is a way 
of reconciling trauma, is a way of living with it. It's a way of ...

19:50:34 May I interrupt you ... You said robots. What were their names ... 
GODZILLA ...

19:50:47 KODWO ESHUN GAMERA ... no? GAMERA. GAMERA was, like, a lizard, a giant 
lizard.

19:50:53 They were all, kind of, giant animals. Animals which, by radiation, 
went out of proportion, like ... going back to Stone Age, to old times, bringing 
them back in ... The BEASTIE BOYS robot is fighting, actually, a kind of 
GODZILLA type of mutant animal again ...

19:51:31 KODWO ESHUN In the video for INTERGALACTIC, the BEASTIE BOYS are 
scientists piloting a giant robot. This giant robot, it's fighting a giant 
robot, a GODZILLA creature. And they're fighting for the soul of the city ... 
ehm ... which they destroy in the process of fighting ... ehm ... And these ... 
this whole video references the era of Fifties and Sixties giant robot videos, 
which worked off ... eh ... the whole thread of mutation, the post-war, post-
Hiroshima, post-Nagasaki thread of atomic mutation, and genetic mutation. So, 
that's when we had characters like GODZILLA, and ... eh ... GAMERA.

19:52:17 KODWO ESHUN These giant lizards, these giant dragons, who were 
simultaneously Stone Age and atomic, simultaneously nuclear and pre-historic. 
And they rampaged through the city, and they destroyed the city. And in this 
video, the BEASTIE BOYS insert themselves into this world, this atomic ... 
atomic and Stone Age world. And now they ... they pilot the robot, they are 
inside the robot. They're the ... they're the pilots of it. And ... eh ... so, 
they're fighting for the soul of ... eh ... of this Japanese city ... ehm ... 
It's part of ... ehm ... the BEASTIE BOYS' fascination for this era, this pre-
digital, pre-electronic world, the return to the world of models and stop-
motion, and plastic animation that is particularly Japanese.

19:53:08 KODWO ESHUN It's not like the world of RAY [???] and American ... ehm 
... stop-motion models. It's a more sophisticated, Japanese world, because of 
the engine of it, its destruction, and annihilation, and mutation ... ehm ... 
none of which American ... American popular culture always saw this as a threat 
and a fear. It's hard to know why, because America has never been bombed to the 
same extent the Japanese have. So we'd imagine that the Japanese popular culture 
understood these ideas in a much more sophisticated way. And it's what ... 
that's what the BEASTIE BOYS love. They love the mix of sophisticated ideas with 
crude and primitive technology ... ehm ...

19:53:49 KODWO ESHUN And their second thing about it is that ... the idea is to 
make to robot funky. There's a point in which the ... the Japanese robot dances 
... eh ... the Japanese robot moves. And that's because ... eh ... the video has 
an electronic component, it has an Electro component. If you remember all of the 
voices in INTERGALACTIC are vocal ... vocals with voice processing. It's a voice 
processing system, it's a way in which you make the human voice robotic ... ehm 
... Similarly ... eh ... what the BEASTIE BOYS wanted to is they wanted to make 
the robot ... funky. And by funky, you mean ... limber.

19:54:25 KODWO ESHUN You want ... eh ... you want this movement which is ... ehm 
... rigid and liquid at the same time. So, you want a robot which is gigantic, 
but at the same time has a responsiveness. On the one hand, robots are stiff, 
because they ... they don't have joints, they're articulated so that they're 
stiff. But on the other hand, you want the robot to have some movement from the 
hips, and to turn. And the key point in the video is when the robot starts to 
break and starts to move. And that's because the BEASTIE BOYS, obviously, come 
from HipHop. And HipHop is all about taking machine rhythm, and giving machine 
rhythm a human feel.

19:55:01 KODWO ESHUN And how can you make machine rhythm, which is the world of 
stiff and rigid motion, how can you give this a human, subtle feel. And this is 
part of what the video is about.

[Is it an octopus? Or is it a lizard?]

19:56:13 KODWO ESHUN I do remember it. I do remember something standing off. 
Maybe it's the ... maybe it's the head, maybe it has like an octopus head. It 
has a lizard body ... But maybe you think of it like an octopus ...

19:56:56 Ok. So, TONIGHT TONIGHT, the SMASHING PUMPKINS one ...

19:57:17 KODWO ESHUN In TONIGHT TONIGHT by SMASHING PUMPKINS, the four members 
of this famous American group travel back in time to the beginning of cinema ... 
ehm ... MELIEZ was famous because at ... at the beginning of cinema, he invented 
cinema's fantasy spaces. The point in which cinema and special effects were the 
same thing ... ehm ... In the intervening hundred years, cinema developed a 
whole series of narratives and characters and dialogues. And at the end of the 
century, people started to dismiss special effects ... ehm ... You heard people 
saying, cinema is nothing but special effects.

19:57:55 KODWO ESHUN But the fact is ... ehm ... cinema in itself is a special 
effect. In ... the ... the actual, primal idea of projection is a special 
effect. And by returning to the beginning of cinema, by returning to cardboard, 
and wood, and animation, and Victorian stiltedness ... ehm ... THE SMASHING 
PUMPKINS ... the virtue of this video is to return us to the beginning of 
cinema, and to show that ... ehm ... special effects and cinema are the same 
thing. So, special effect aren't something to come later. The whole idea of 
cinema, and fascination, and sitting in a darkened room, looking at these very 
primitive movements ... eh ... this is, like, one of the essences of cinema.

19:58:39 KODWO ESHUN So you can say that cinema, in its beginning, was fantastic 
... ehm ... cinema was ... had a science fiction component, from its outset. And 
even the technological apparatus of cinema, I think, all those pre- ... all that 
machines that led up to cinema, the Zootrope, and the Cinematograph, and the ... 
and all the machines, the archaeology of media that led up to the camera, and 
the projector ... ehm ... all these were leading up to ... eh ... a more 
sophisticated realization ... realization of fantasy. I think, cinema didn't 
start off trying to catch reality, I think it started off trying to project 
reality ... project fantasy.

19:59:20 KODWO ESHUN And ... ehm ... by travelling back in time and discovering 
themselves, as these Nineteenth Century explorers, THE SMASHING PUMPKINS want to 
tap into cinema's ... ehm ... cinema's ... ehm ... original ... ehm ... ideas of 
fascination, and mysterious ... the mysteriousness, the way in which cinema is 
closer to magic lanterns than it is to documentary. People think cinema was born 
in realism, born in the idea to document reality. But I think it wasn't. I think 
cinema is, like KENNETH ANGER says, cinema was born in the attempt to fascinate, 
and to conjure mystery from nowhere. And that's what the SMASHING PUMPKINS video 
does, at its best.


BETA 10

10:00:07 KODWO die Sechste ... [Klappe]

10:00:10 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, the ... ehm ... the singer, the MC, the songwriter 
MISSY ELLIOTT, and the producer TIMBERLAND, and the video director HYPE 
WILLIAMS, they've collaborated on lots of videos since 1997, with ... ehm ... 
THE RAIN (SUPA DUPA FLY). And in 1998, they all collaborated on the video SOCK 
IT TO ME. And in SOCK IT TO ME, MISSY ELLIOTT becomes ... eh ... a transformer 
toy. So, she shrinks in size ... ehm ... and she gains ... ehm ... a new color 
scheme. She gains ... eh ... a white and red color scheme with a giant M on her 
chest. And she's next to LIL' KIM, LIL' KIM has a K, LIL' KIM has a helmet, with 
a yellow ... with blond hair, LIL' KIM'S [???] blond hair.

10:00:58 KODWO ESHUN And they're being chased by a series of predatory robots. 
And they move across the landscape ... eh ... And they're joined, at one point, 
by DA BRAT ... ehm ... DA BRAT is also a key female MC. DA BRAT is the one with 
the avian helmet, and she is on the motorbike. And they all get on the 
motorbike, the space motorbike, and off they go. So, it's the adventures of 
MISSY ELLIOTT in this microcosmic world ... eh ... And the key is that HYPE 
WILLIAMS ... HYPE WILLIAMS' videos have broken with ... ehm ... the early 
Nineties world, where most videos had a territorial imperative.

10:01:35 KODWO ESHUN They were based around a street, or a neighborhood, or a 
particular area. And they were based on a ... ehm ... an obligation to keep to 
... ehm ... as people used to say, to keep it real, an obligation to represent 
this area, this neighborhood to the world, to project your particular 
neighborhood to the world. And HYPE WILLIAMS' breakthrough was to break with 
this idea of territorial representation totally, to leave it behind, and to move 
into a world of fantasy, a world of luxury, and a world of imagination. So, 
instead of illustrating the worlds that the music comes from, as videos used to 
do, HYPE WILLIAMS moves into the world of the song, the world of SOCK IT TO ME.

10:02:18 KODWO ESHUN So, this is what you're in, you're in the world of the 
song, and not only that, you're in the world of the song's syncopation. 
TIMBERLAND'S innovation was to invent a new kind of rhythm for R'n'B. It was to 
make R'n'B more synthetic, and more electronic. And at the same time, it was to 
introduce a new, dynamic energy to R'n'B, to make R'n'B more stop and more start 
... ehm ... This explains why MISSY ELLIOTT'S motions are often quite jerky, why 
they have this ... they have this stilted ... they ... they move, and then they 
lurch, they're fluid, but they're stiff. She's a robot, but she's also limber.

10:02:54 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... and ... eh ... MISSY ELLIOTT ... ehm ... who is 
MELISSA ELLIOTT, MELISSA ELLIOTT'S ... ehm ... invention of her MISSY 
MISDEMEANOR ELLIOTT persona ... eh ... is a persona, again, that broke with 
previous images of female HipHop, totally. Previously, the whole energy of 
female HipHop was about being as tough as the next male MC. MISSY ELLIOTT, 
again, broke through into a totally imaginative world of her own invention. And 
she says herself that ... ehm ... she's no more paying attention to anybody 
else, she's totally in her own world. And you can see this in this ... you enter 
the world with a song, and it's on her own terms.

10:03:33 KODWO ESHUN So, taking over this idea of the transformer ... ehm ... 
and it was MISSY to imagine herself as a super-heroine, and she's a super-
heroine with her girls, beside her. MISSY ELLIOTT is famous for not just 
introducing herself, but a whole bunch of her gang. She's always bringing in 
girl performers with her, and they are always working with her. So, she moves on 
her own, but she also always moves with her clique. And that's what you see. You 
see this ... you see this ... ehm ... a ... this modern definition of R'n'B, 
which is far more militant than ... ehm ... say, to me, than ... ehm ... the 
Riot Grrrl era of the early Nineties ... ehm ...

10:04:10 KODWO ESHUN The ... the R'n'B ... the Riot Grrrl of the early Nineties 
is now the R'n'B girl of ... ehm ... the Twenty-first Century. And ... eh ... 
there is always a militancy, and a toughness, and a vastly expanded ... a range 
of emotions. At the same time, it is more of a playful, more cartooney, more 
humorous, lighter aspect ... ehm ... So, the world is expanded, at the same 
time, because now it can include anything. But having it expanded, they then 
shrink it down to the animated, and the cartoonish. So, MISSY ELLIOTT represents 
a kind of futuristic and playful kind of animated digital world, in which you 
can move through ... and in which she wins.

10:04:50 KODWO ESHUN And she wins not only because she's a new super-heroine, 
but because she's ... she's the incarnation of the newness of the song. The song 
has a new, digital rhythm. It's got a brand new rhythm. It's very difficult to 
invent a new rhythm. It's a really ... it's a very strong thing. It sends 
repercussions throughout the musical world when somebody comes up with a new 
rhythm. And TIMBERLAND invented a new rhythm. So, SOCK IT TO ME is driven by the 
energy that a new rhythm causes, like, the explosion of excitement when a new 
rhythm is invented. And ... ehm ... MISSY ELLIOTT is like the personification of 
that energy.

10:05:30 KODWO ESHUN She's the avatar of the world. She's the personification of 
digital rhythm in the new world. And this is why she is the super-heroine, 
because she's like ... it's like her energy, and her battery, and her power ... 
is this new digital rhythm. So nothing can stop her. And you're in her world, 
and she's just going to overcome everything. So, you have these robots pursuing 
her, but they're never going to get to her. They're always too slow, and then 
lumbering, they're tall, and they're too heavy. And she's ... she's ... on the 
one hand, she's, like ... she's, like, big and bulky, but she has this 
nimbleness and this swiftness that enables her to elude everything.

10:06:05 KODWO ESHUN And ... eh ... with her girls beside her, with LIL' KIM to 
one side of her, and DA BRAT to the other side of her, she's always going to 
win. So, it's a heroic story ... eh ... And it's her rhythm delivered in the 
humorous aspect of Japanese Anime, Japanese transformers. This identification 
with the robotic, and with the Alien, gives MISSY the surprise factor, gives her 
the X-factor which enables her to elude her enemies. So she will ... she's 
faster than them, she's cleverer than them, and she's wittier than them.

10:06:38 It's also not threatening at all. It's very playful ...

10:06:43 KODWO ESHUN It's the confidence of it. MISSY ELLIOTT'S confidence, and 
TIMBERLAND'S confidence, and HYPE WILLIAMS' confidence. The confidence of the 
collaboration between the three allows ... ehm ... a relaxation ... ehm ... 
allows ... eh ... a movement which has no defensiveness, and has no aggressive, 
threatening qualities at all ... ehm ... There's no need for it. They're in 
their ... they're in their own world, and ... eh ... they can play as they like, 
in their own world. And this reminds us that music is a way machines go to play. 
So, the music video is where you can see the playfulness of machines. Rhythm is 
where music learns to shake off an old idea.

10:07:28 KODWO ESHUN And when you enter a new rhythmic regime, the impact of it 
is massive. A new rhythmic regime suggests a new visual regime, it suggests a 
new persona. Sometimes when I look at that video, it's ... it's like the three 
of them have combined to imagining a new human. If you imagine a rhythm, a new 
rhythm suggests a new way of moving, that is just a new way of placing your 
feet. Okay, so, you have a new rhythm, so you imagine the new feet, the new 
dance that goes with the new rhythm. Then you imagine the new feet that make the 
new rhythm. Then you imagine new limbs that make the new feet, that make the new 
feet, and the new dance.

10:08:04 KODWO ESHUN Then you imagine the hips that go with the limbs that go 
with the feet that go with the dance. And then go on and then grow a new human, 
from the rhythm. And that's what they've done. They've grown a new human, from 
the feet upwards. And that new human is MISSY ELLIOTT. And it's a five minute 
human, you know, it's for the level of the song. But it stays with you, because 
it's so powerful. It's genuine invention, it's digital invention. And it's the 
collaboration of three people at the height of their creative power. It's in 
1998 ... ehm ... They're still strong now, but even now, new HipHop people are 
coming in.

10:08:38 KODWO ESHUN There's EVE, there's [???]BEATS, there's [???], there's 
NEPTUNES, just in two years. But in 1998, these three had it all to themselves. 
And this is really at the height of it. In 2000, things are already getting 
crowded. But in 1998, they had the whole world at their fingertips. And you can 
see it. Because they don't set out to prove that. They're just in their own, 
animated world, running. Running from their own inventions. It's, like, nobody 
can touch them, so they have to invent their own enemies. And that's what these 
robots are.

10:09:11 You haven't said much, in this case, about the space aspect of the 
video. I don't know how you can connect it to the other ...

10:09:22 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... in the video for SOCK IT TO ME ... eh ... space 
holds no threat. Space isn't something to be ... eh ... run away from. Space is 
another playground. Space is a playground, DA BRAT arrives on her space 
motorbike, she speeds through the air. She's got lots of ... she's really angry. 
But she's not angry at you, she's angry because that's her expressive nature. 
Because she's an avatar ... ehm ... Similarly, MISSY ELLIOTT ... they're being 
chased through space, they're being chased across the surface of an Alien 
planet, by these robots. But you never think they're going to get caught, and 
you never worry about it

10:09:57 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... the whole stake of the video isn't in terms of 
anxiety, and isn't in terms of space as a ... as a traumatic space. It's more 
that space is a space for ... for a playground of the head. That space is an 
imaginative point of adventure. It's like a big adventure playground for them, 
and everything about space helps them to achieve this adventure. So that the 
gravity, the fact that there is no gravity in space, this helps them to achieve 
lift off. The fact that there is no light in space, this only means that they 
have to carry their own light source with them. So, that's why they're kind of 
white and red.

10:10:34 KODWO ESHUN The fact that everything is ... ehm ... optically ... ehm 
... optically exaggerated, that fact that everything is red and is purple, this 
only helps MISSY'S own preference for ... ehm ... a super-hero ... super-heroine 
colors. MISSY'S preferences for, like, extreme reds, and extreme purples, go 
together with HYPE WILLIAMS' preferences for animation, and for extreme images 
... ehm ... Space isn't a place of isolation, or a place of alienation, or a 
connection to the past. Space is like a playground in the present. Because ... 
eh ... because at a point in time when they all had ... when they were all at 
their creative peak and creative confidence ... ehm ... space was, like, an 
absolute place of possibility for them.

10:11:31 If you don't mind ... I would like to ask you a couple of questions. 
Like, in the very beginning, when I first talked to you about it, I told you 
about the point of the emancipation of the image towards the sound. So, it's no 
more a one way thing, you know, the video comes to support and promote the song, 
but, practically, in many cases, the song becomes part of the soundtrack, it's 
no longer the full soundtrack. It sometimes gets taken back even, for other 
stuff that appears. So, the music becomes part of the soundtrack ... I don't 
know if you find that's true, or maybe want to elaborate a bit on this issue. 
And, maybe, the question is, does this take it away from the promo function of 
the video, or ... Videos are still promoting the song. At the same time, they go 
away from this slavery functioning and become more sophisticated. Their relation 
becomes more sophisticated, which maybe helps the promo function. Or it can be 
seen as against the promo function, I don't know ...

10:13:12 KODWO ESHUN Yeah. In certain music videos ... ehm ... you can see a 
different direction, in which the format of the music video is pressed until the 
video starts to function more as a short film. I think you can see this 
emancipation of the music video especially in the work of SPIKE JONES, and in 
MIKE MILLS, and in ROMAN COPPOLA. You can see it in all three of these 
directors, especially. And that's because they're all working with a narrative. 
They're all narrativizing their music videos, so, suddenly, the music isn't the 
motor of the narrative, as it would be in the directors who are syncopated, like 
HYPE WILL ... HYPE MILL ... HYPE ...

10:13:59 KODWO ESHUN Like HYPE WILLIAMS or CHRIS CUNNINGHAM, in which they are 
very different. But in both cases, the music is the motor of the video. Because 
it's syncopation, and synchronizing syncopation that matters. But in the work of 
these narrative directors, people like MIKE MILLS, and ROMAN COPPOLA, and SPIKE 
JONES, you got something else happening. You got a narrative which is stretching 
out the video, it's pushing it at its limits, so it's making it longer and 
longer. As we know, in ... for instance, in ALL I NEED ... ehm ... MIKE MILLS is 
stretching out this particular video until it's reaching ... it's moving past 
the ten minute mark, past the fifteen minute mark.

10:14:38 KODWO ESHUN And at this certain point, the music video starts to take 
on a form halfway between a documentary, a shot film, and a music video. It's 
all of these things, but it's in between them as well. And it's in the overlaps 
between these three genres that you see his work. Similarly, in ... ehm ... 
ROMAN COPPOLA ... or was it SPIKE JONES ... ROMAN COPPOLA'S videos for DAFT 
PUNK, like the boy with the dog head ...

10:15:05 SPIKE JONES ...

10:15:06 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, in SPIKE JONES' videos for DAFT PUNK, where the 
character has a dog head, and the character, he's walking through New York, and 
he's visiting a drug store, and he buys some drinks, and he visits a girl, 
there's this entire long narrative ... ehm ... a shaggy dog narrative. You can't 
quite get the point of the narrative, but you're following it anyway. The music 
is there, but the music seems to be banished. The music is far away at the back 
of your mind as you're watching it. But the music is always there ... ehm ... 
MIKE MILLS pointed out to me that ... ehm ... in ALL I NEED, you can actually 
see AIR, in every clip.

10:15:43 KODWO ESHUN And that was really a surprise. Because I totally hadn't 
realized this at all. But he said, AIR are there, the ... Both of the guys are 
always there, like, in the background, doing particular things. But it's this 
reversal, it's this reversal of function. It's the way in which the producers 
have slipped to the periphery, and it's the way in which the music has slipped 
to the periphery ... ehm ... This is what's new about these narratives. Because, 
all these directors are far ... far more fascinated by turning the music video 
into a narrative vehicle, into a shot film vehicle, than they are interested in 
syncopation. So, this leads them to push the music to the background.

10:16:21 KODWO ESHUN And it works, of course, because ... because of the ... 
first of all, the confusion that you feel, the enjoyable confusion of ... what 
am I watching? So, this means that they the advertising function. Because you 
will still remember it. Like, you remember the DAFT PUNK video, even though you 
can't remember the music. And you remember the AIR video, even though you can't 
remember the music. So, it still works to promote AIR, because AIR are still in 
your mind. It still with, you know, with DAFT PUNK. And having done this, this 
frees them then to go on, this frees them then to explore a kind of 
idiosyncratic, low-key, banal narrative.

10:16:58 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... in MIKE MILLS' case, this frees him to explore this 
question and answer format that he enjoys. In SPIKE JONES' format, it frees him 
to explore this ... these eccentric juxtapositions of this unexplained dog head. 
That's his fascination. And he's going to use the music video as a Trojan Horse. 
Music video is a horse in which he can infiltrate his obsessions and his 
fascinations. And this, quite obviously, is a training ground for movies. It's 
quite clear to us now, after watching BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, that SPIKE JONES was 
using all these videos as a training ground for short films. And how can I make 
a short film, and get something else to pay for it.

10:17:38 KODWO ESHUN I'll go with DAFT PUNK, who are fascinated by a personas 
and alter egos, they don't be in their videos, anyway. Even in STAR DUST, 
they're not there. In STAR DUST, they're these silver men on top of the clouds, 
looking down. So, DAFT PUNK ... DAFT PUNK ... ehm ... this totally suits my 
purposes. So, I'll use this vehicle of the music video, and I'll try out my 
fascination with short film ... ehm ... I think that's a lot of what's going on, 
with these directors. Just the use of music video to stretch the format, while 
maintaining the promotional aspect. But they're so smart, because ... ehm ... 
they realize that the promotional aspect doesn't have to be ... ehm ... doesn't 
have to be in the foreground.

10:18:20 KODWO ESHUN That even if you push the promotion to the edge of the 
frame, it'S still doing its job. It's still holding you. It's still doing the 
job of saying, do you remember that AIR video? Did you see that DAFT PUNK video? 
It's so ... so, it works. They're still promoting, but they're doing all these 
other things as well.

10:18:45 The other thing was the fact that MTV is still not really orientated 
towards the videos, but to the music. And do you feel like saying something 
about this?

10:19:01 KODWO ESHUN Yeah ... ehm ... even at this late stage, where it's 
becoming clear that, in the work of MIKE MILLS, and in the work of SPIKE JONES, 
in the work of ROMAN COPPOLA, in the work of MICHEL G[???], in the work of HYPE 
WILLIAMS, in the work of CHRIS CUNNINGHAM, in the work of JONATHAN GLASER ... 
even when it's obvious that music video directors are some of the most creative 
auteurs of the last decade, of the decade to come ... even when it's clear that 
all these directors are using their music videos as vehicles for their personal 
obsessions, obsessions which they share with ... with particular producers or 
groups ...

10:19:38 KODWO ESHUN Even after all this, and MTV maintains ... ehm ... a very 
narrow idea of what the music video can do, it turns out that you can promote 
music in any number of ways. But MTV have a very strict idea of what propmotion 
is. In this way, MTV are kind of marketing classicists ... ehm ... They are not 
people who see marketing as a platform for various adventures of promotion ... 
ehm ... In England, you have many marketing people who are very creative, and 
they're using marketing as this platform for all kinds of strange innovations 
... interventions, and infiltration. But MTV isn't like this at all. They have a 
very formal, classical idea of marketing, which maybe belongs to the Fifties or 
the Sixties or something.

10:20:20 KODWO ESHUN They are marketing traditionalists, and they think ... They 
want a one-to-one correlation. Which is right. When MTV ... ehm ... made ... eh 
... made their own list of the hundred best music videos of all time, the ... eh 
... qualities that they were looking for in the music videos weren't one of 
vision and aesthetic at all. On the contrary, the qualities were one of ... ehm 
... promotion. But it turns out that the reason why we're all fascinated of ... 
by music videos, in the last five years, is that you can have both. You can have 
vision, and you can have promotion. This is, like, a point in entertaining 
culture which is very ... maybe very special ... ehm ...

10:20:57 KODWO ESHUN This point where you can have all the ... all of the 
criteria of advertising, they can all be fulfilled, and you can have all the 
criteria of vision and aesthetic and digital speculation. You can have them both 
... ehm ... Always, you can have them both. And all of the directors I talked 
about ... But MTV, in a bizarre ... in a bizarre, short-sighted attitude to its 
own ... to its own field ... ehm ... only recognizes the first, and not the 
second. Very strange, and ... ehm ... who knows why ... ehm ... Because they're 
locked into a certain, particular pattern.

10:21:31 KODWO ESHUN But ... ehm ... it feels a bit irrelevant. Because ... ehm 
... because it's at this ... it's at this point ... ehm ... it's at this point 
where ... ehm ... you had this particular intersection of ... eh ... aesthetics 
with advertising. It's at his point that ... ehm ... film festivals and 
documentaries, and critical apparatuses stepped in. And it became clear to 
everybody that this was something ... there ... there was a particular ... that 
this particular ... ehm ... mix of advertising and aesthetics was very special, 
and very unique. And it's at his point that the ... ehm ... the music videos 
moved out of the orbit of MTV'S, and started migrating around the film festivals 
of the world.

10:22:10 KODWO ESHUN And it's at this moment that documentaries started being 
made about very particular ... eh ... very particular music directors. There 
have already been two books written on HYPE WILLIAMS, I'm working on a book on 
music video directors, of course. Because it's like the key thing, it's the way 
of talking about digital cinema, and about kinetics, and about movement, and 
about cinema. It's a soft way of talking about digital culture. It's a kind of 
immediate way. So ... ehm ... in this sense, it's irrelevant that MTV doesn't 
understand what's ... what's going on ... ehm ... MTV is ... ehm ... Maybe it 
doesn't understand the idea of broadcast graphics in the digital age.

10:22:50 KODWO ESHUN The fact that MTV has a very restricted idea of it, maybe 
this is irrelevant. Because ... ehm ... by now, the whole world is watching, and 
tuning in. By now, we are all much more fascinated by what these particular 
directors are up to, by who the new names will be, by what ... by the new 
movements, the new fermatas, the new speeds, the new slownesses, the new 
narratives that will emerge. So, it's bigger than MTV now ... ehm ... In ... in 
a sense, it's MTV'S own success. They wanted a global audience, and they got it. 
But with the global audience come totally different demands for it.

10:23:22 KODWO ESHUN Now, we're much more fascinated by the ... eh ... we're 
much more fascinated by the particular aesthetic principles of work. And the 
advertising, that's always so fascinating. But it's not in the quite ... it's 
not the old criteria anymore. Maybe MTV have had it their way for a long time, 
and it's almost like they've abdicated it. In the sense that it would have been 
worse if they really got interested in aesthetics. Because then, of course, 
they'd start turning up everywhere else, and they'd start turning up to ... ehm 
... festivals, they'd start turning up at Ars Electronica. And that would be 
strange, wouldn't it?

10:23:51 KODWO ESHUN I mean, maybe it's a good thing. If it would ... imagine if 
MTV did start to ... start making the aesthetic, and visual choices, and they 
started going in there. If they ... if they appointed a critic in residence, at 
MTV. Which I could do, I could do that. Imagine they appointed ... appointed a 
professor in visual studies at ... at MTV, to ... eh ... analyze their videos, 
and work out what is going on. Wouldn't that be strange, or what? There are 
strange things that have happened, with [???]. There's ... in America, there's 
lots of sponsored ... ehm ... sponsored professorships. You know, there are 
assistant professor sponsored by SAINSBURY'S, you know.

10:24:26 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... If MTV were really clever, that's what they'd do. 
You know, because they could afford it easily, they'd find a curator, and they'd 
have their own MTV festivals of videos. But they're not doing it. Which is why 
we all are, instead. So, maybe it's not so bad that they don't have a clue. 
Maybe this is a saving ... a saving status. And, maybe, it's actually going to 
change. By the ... this end of this year, they'll have their own ... they'll be 
appointing their own curators, and we're all be moaning about it.

10:24:48 KODWO ESHUN Oh my God, have you heard what the curator at MTV has 
chosen ... has chosen. Have you heard what he's been choosing? Have you seen 
this program that MTV have got? And they've hired out every cinema in the world. 
Have you heard MTV will be turning up at all the film festivals. So you must 
show our videos ...

10:25:04 So could it be said that ... coming from Oberhausen, having seen the 
international competition, sometimes disappointing, and then the clip program is 
very exciting ... Can it be said that, under the conditions of promotion, in the 
field of the music video developed a vanguard of ... of the art of filmmaking 
... of our age ... Is this the field where innovation, cinematographic 
innovation happens?

10:25:42 KODWO ESHUN I think it's clear from the last five years, if not six or 
seven years, of the music video, that it's been functioning as a laboratory for 
a new kind of digital cinema ... ehm ... So it's a laboratory in which new 
approaches can be tried out ... ehm ... Because of its particular function, 
halfway between the advert and the trailer, between the musical and the short 
film. It ... eh ... it ... it occupies a particular place in entertainment 
culture. Because it has to advertise, at the same time as it has to attract ... 
ehm ... Because it offers collaborations with the creative world of music.

10:26:25 KODWO ESHUN It has become a platform for digital aesthetics, and ... 
and in a very extreme way. Up until very recently, Hollywood was still 
camouflaging its digital approaches. They were using AVID, they were using 
SOFTIMAGE, but they were using it to present reality ... ehm ... Music video was 
the first point in which digital cinema showed its two-face. It's the point in 
which digital cinema showed its elastic reality. It's the point in which digital 
cinema its soft image ... ehm ... And now, you can see this happening more and 
more. This is the importance of THE MATRIX.

10:27:00 KODWO ESHUN THE MATRIX is one of these first movies ... first Hollywood 
movies to show the elastic reality of the digital image. And then, to integrate 
that into the story is very powerful ... eh ... Not only to show the digital 
image, but then to make the digital image part of an entire scenario of 
situationism, and simulation, and simulacra, and martial arts. And that's a very 
powerful move. But until that time, Hollywood was always pretending. You know, 
that the smart ... that people would go on and on about ... I don't know ... ehm 
... ehm ... FOREST GUMP, in which Hollywood digitally inserts FOREST GUMP into 
historical situations.

10:27:39 KODWO ESHUN Well, that's ... okay, that's quite satisfying. But we've 
seen it in [???], it's a well known formula, and it felt very familiar. THE 
MATRIX was something else. And, to me, THE MATRIX is a ... a movie that 
acknowledges the significance of music videos. It's a video ... it's a film that 
acknowledges that music videos have been an incubator for digital aesthetics. 
And ... eh ... it has taken this long for Hollywood to say, yes ... ehm ... 
let's take some of these digital aesthetics, and let's present them in their 
extremity, and then, let's integrate this extremity into a plot. So now, special 
effects become the motor of a plot about reality effects.

10:28:20 KODWO ESHUN And this is one of the key things about the music video, 
that it suggests a compressed analysis of special effects, and reality effects, 
on the one hand. It turns out that all Hollywood is digital cinema. And maybe 
almost all broadcast graphics are now digital television, digital visuals. But 
up until now, it was only the music video that showed us this, and that showed 
us the possibilities of this. Until that time ... almost ... so many the 
broadcast graphics were ... put digital effects at the service of an old idea of 
reality effects. Music video was the first to change this, and to put digital 
effects at the service of a new reality, of an elastic reality.

10:29:05 KODWO ESHUN But, after THE MATRIX, things have changed again, and they 
will change again. But everybody can see this, that, for sure, that digital 
video was the testbed for the elastic reality of the soft image.

10:29:30 KODWO ... [Klappe]

10:29:31 KODWO ESHUN [...] since digital age, you have much more really 
interesting videos. And this is maybe related to this fact, that it's a very 
good possibility..

10:29:39 KODWO ESHUN I think so. I think that the three minute format of the 
music video allows you, first of all, to abandon narrative, in favor of 
repetition, and pattern, and syncopation. And on the other hand, if you want to 
reinvent narrative ... ehm ... in an idiosyncratic and eccentric way, you can do 
this as well. Or you can have a new combination of both. You can have something 
that starts out as pattern and sequence, and becomes narrative, and then moves 
in between the two. But the compression, and the abbreviation, allows ... ehm 
... allows a focus, and a dynamism, I think, that really made the digital video 
... ehm ... a key ... a key form for expression of digital aestetics.

10:30:27 KODWO ESHUN It became a testbed. Because everything is so strict. 
Because you have to fit this three and a half to four minute formula. At the 
same time, whenever you break it, you have to break it for something very 
serious, which is why, when MIKE MILLS breaks it, or when SPIKE JONES breaks it, 
whenever anybody ventures out into ten, fifteen minutes ... ehm ... there's 
something very serious. It's that it becomes an event film. It becomes an event 
video, again. It becomes something you talk about. Because breaking it means, 
you better have something serious to get across. Otherwise, why break it.

10:31:04 KODWO ESHUN It's not perfect, it's kind of ... it's got ... ehm ... 
it's not perfect, but it's got ... ehm ... it has the strictness of an advert, 
and of ... ehm ... of ... ehm ... a Haiku, and of a sonnet, these strict, formal 
forms that allow lot of variation within this strict format ... ehm ... I think 
that's very true ... ehm ... And it really helps a lot, I think. It stops 
indulgence. But at the same time, it allows it. It makes ... it's a rigorous 
indulgence.

10:31:47 Oh yeah, in the beginning, before the cameras were running, you were 
saying something about the visual intensity of the translation of music into ...

10:32:05 KODWO ESHUN Yeah, the MEGO videos ... ehm ... their operating on 
retinal intensity. So, for instance, the fact that both video and audio are both 
forms of data, and the fact that both forms of data work by streams, streams 
which, if they're visualized, look granula. In the same way as, if you listen to 
a data connection, when you dial up onto your Mac and go into the internet, what 
you hear is the harsh sound of white noise. What's the visual equivalent of 
white noise? It's granula. It's a granula stream ... a granula vision. It's just 
streaming black and white streams. And you can really see this in lots of the 
MEGO films, which are working on different speeds of granula synthesis.

10:32:55 KODWO ESHUN They're really working on granula synthesis which is, like, 
slow, streamed ... Granula streams, like, when they are going downwards then 
they are slow, then you have a granula synthesis ... synthesis which is going 
up. You just have these streams of granula vision, just like a turbulence. And 
then, the point is that any fluctuation in it is registered really quickly. So, 
again, you can have rhythm, and syncopation, but it is not a rhythm and a 
syncopation of ... ehm ... human, it's patterns of data.

10:13:12 KODWO ESHUN And ... ehm ... the ... the ... eh ... the new aestetic in 
... ehm ... MEGO, from Austria, and the new aesthetic of producers ... directors 
like TINA FRANK, are really working on different speeds of granula synthesis, 
different speeds of granula streams. And you have granula streams that slow 
down, that speed up, pause, and all of the micro-fluctuations between the three, 
these ... these ... eh ... these are now a new kind of syncopation again. But it 
takes a while to see it, because, initially, you're so overwhelmed by the ... 
the unfriendliness, and the intimidating quality of what you're seeing and 
hearing. Because there are no human patterns to recognize, as in the syncopated 
directors, like CHRIS CUNNINGHAM, and HYPE WILLIAMS.

10:34:14 KODWO ESHUN But there is no narrative, as in the world of SPIKE ... ehm 
... JONES, and MIKE MILLS. It's neither of these, it's ... it's patterns of 
data. So, it's a new, abstract cinema. It's using music videos to do new, 
abstract short films. So, on the one hand, you could say that they're the ... 
ehm ... that they're the descendants of ... ehm ... HANS RICHTER, and all the 
... the ... the ... the ... the directors of the Twenties and the Thirties, who 
really ... who were really working on a visual music, who were really working on 
patterns of abstract data.

10:34:51 KODWO ESHUN They are doing that. And, in fact, there's a video, 
especially for ... ehm ... a group called RADIAN, a new group on MEGO. And this 
video is amazing ... is ... it's amazing, because it's, kind of, like ... ehm 
... it's, like, suprematism meets SPACE INVADERS. It's all the angles, and 
horizontals, and verticals of MONDRIAN, or of RIETVELD, or of THEO VAN DOESBURG, 
it's all verticals and horizontals. But, on the other hand, it's syncopated, and 
it's also pixelated. So, you have verticals and horizontals, but they're 
pixelated to look like SPACE INVADERS, or DEFENDERS. So it's this ... it's, 
like, suprematism after SPACE INVADERS.

10:35:31 KODWO ESHUN So, you have this huge white screen. And then, at the very 
edge of the screen, you have a bar, you just have a vertical bar. And then, you 
have, like, a horizontal bar. And then you have another bar, then another bar. 
And then, just have, like, these excerpts from a supremativist ... suprematist 
canvas. Excerpts ... or, more of a De Stijl, you have excerpts of a De Stijl 
canvas, not suprematist. Excerpts from a De Stijl canvas, just excerpts. But 
everything is pixelated, like SPACE INVADERS, so a De Stijl time SPACE INVADERS 
... ehm ... 

10:36:03 KODWO ESHUN So, you can see that ... ehm ... they are kind of updating 
these ... ehm ... these new visions ... those visions, the modernist visions of 
the early Twentieth Century, of suprematism, and De Stijl, and constructivism, 
all those particular visions, but they're updating it. And at the same time, it 
has an analogue feel. It's got a SPACE INVADERS feel, it's got a blocky, 
pixelated feel. So, in that way in which computer graphics from the Eighties now 
look Stone Age, you have a peculiar mix of times and moods. You have the 
Twenties of De Stijl, and you have the Eighties of SPACE INVADERS, and then you 
have the very Nineties music of RADIAN, which is Jazz music.

10:36:42 KODWO ESHUN It's a Jazz trio. But ... so there's ... there's a brush, 
there's drums, there's, like, a bass, and there's maybe ... ehm ... there's ... 
There's drums, there's a bass and there's a piano. But over that is these harsh, 
digital noises ... kch-kch-kch-kch-kch ... these noises of data, inharmonic 
noises with no music, unmusical audio sounds, but floating over the top of a 
Jazz trio. So, you have all these things working together, and this aspect  ... 
ehm ... is really fascinating. Because it updates ... ehm ... it updates the 
experiments of the Twenties and the Thirties. And ... ehm ... it brings them 
back, back into perception.

10:37:20 KODWO ESHUN Ehm ... they've always been there, buy maybe they got 
trapped in the museums. Maybe they got locked into exhibitions ... ehm ... They 
got ... they ... they fell of the radar of modern sensibilities. And ... ehm ... 
MEGO'S ... videos really bring them back into perception. And ... ehm ... I 
expect that in the next ... the next three to four years ... eh ... what's going 
to be really fascinating is, if ... ehm ... the MEGO directors, if people like 
TINA FRANK, and HERWIG WEISER, if they make short films, from their productions. 
That would really be fascination. And what would a short film ... what would 
TINA FRANK'S short film look like?

10:38:03 KODWO ESHUN What would a twenty-four minute short film based on these 
granula streams ... how would that look like? Would they reintroduce the human 
figure? Would they have to reintroduce the narrative? Would they be able to bend 
narrative out of shape? Would the human be mutated out of all proportion? It's 
really fascinating. Nobody knows yet. But ... ehm ... again, it feels like ... 
ehm ... that digital video would be the host for a new, abstract cinema. That's 
kind of exciting, you know, very exciting. But hard to see. Hard to understand 
yet.

10:38:38 Very interesting. I don't know this ...

10:38:41 KODWO ESHUN It's in CHRISTIAN'S ... CHRISTIAN'S ... ehm ... program, in 
the same SYNTHETIC PLEASURES program.

[... OVAL ... two from KHM with music from CHRISTIAN FENNESZ ...]

10:40:26 KODWO ESHUN It reminds me a bit of ... Do you know ... you that MANUEL 
DELANDA book, A THOUSAND YEARS OF NON-LINEAR HISTORY? You know this book? Senta, 
do you know this book? MANUEL DELANDA, A THOUSAND YEARS OF NON-LINEAR HISTORY? 
It's on ZONE BOOKS, and if you look at the front cover by BRUCE [???], the front 
cover, it's the same, it's these bands of hot color, just like [???]. But I 
don't know if [???] are big fans of parallelcy. So, it's like a digital ... 
Actually it's not a digital ... Because, you know what they did it with? They 
did it with a FAIRLIGHT video synthesizer.

10:40:57 KODWO ESHUN And that's it, there was, like, only three invented in the 
whole world. So, at the same time as TERRY ... at the same time as TREVOR HORN 
was using a FAIRLIGHT synthesizer to compose SLAVE TO THE RHYTHM ... somebody 
invented these FAIRLIGHT video synthesizers. They only invented three, because 
they're very slow, very expensive. And then, that's it, they stopped. Somehow, I 
don't know, they must have got hold of one of these FAIRLIGHT video 
synthesizers, and they made that video with it. It's these hot bands of vertical 
... horizontal colors, and then they go vertical, and ... it's just a beautiful 
video ...

[RADIAN is the very beginning of a vinyl record, the edge of it ...]

10:42:30 KODWO ESHUN MEGO [...] CHRISTIAN FENNESZ [...]. So, his album, I mean, 
his record, from 1997, HOTEL PARAL.LEL, this is a key record in glitch music ...

10:43:03 KODWO ESHUN So, this is all glitch music, you know, all music made from 
audio files, and then breaking it down ... All music made with ... ehm ... they 
call it DSP, Digital Signal Processing. So, it's all in ... it's all internal to 
the computer. They don't sample anything from outside. So, they'll create an 
audio file inside the computer, using particular software. And then, they'll 
process, digitally process the signal, using some more software. So, it all 
turns out sounding more like audio than music. And they actually refer to it as 
audio, not music. Because it's ... obviously, it's very inharmonic, very harsh 
sounds ... ehm ...

10:43:42 KODWO ESHUN The best is when they add some really beautiful sounds. 
Like, there's ... ehm ... there's one record by CHRISTIAN FENNESZ, PETER REHBERG 
and JIM O'ROURKE, and ... PAINT IT BLACK. So, they take the old ROLLING STONES 
track, and then they digitally signal process, they DSP it. So, it sounds 
amazing, because you ... you can hold on to the ROLLING STONES, but at the same 
time, there's just a huge wave of, like, audio matter. It's just amazing, it's 
really amazing.

[They did it with a LED ZEPPELIN sample ... from PRESENCE ...]

10:44:54 KODWO ESHUN These are the ... these people are the ... they made the 
next move after OVAL. They were, like, very much ... with everybody totally 
focused on OVAL, that was, like, kind of 94 or 95, even 96. And suddenly, in 96 
or 97, these MEGO guys just struck. And they were much harsher than OVAL. OVAL 
was very beautiful music. But these MEGO guys were much ... much harsher. So, 
everybody was really shocked.

10:45:20 KODWO ESHUN But ... ehm ... two things, there's ... ehm ... Somebody 
told me that, at the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, they have programs of these 
videos. They've had two ... this year and last year, they had, like, a one and a 
half hour program of, like, new Austrian videos. So, new videos for glitch 
music. So, somebody told me about that. But ... ehm ... but I don't know who. 
CHRISTIAN is [...]