Made in L.A. 2020: a version Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS®

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Kahlil Joseph, BLKNWS® (2018–ongoing). Two-channel fugitive newscast. Installation view, Made in L.A. 2020: a version, Hank’s Mini Market, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS®, included in the Hammer’s Made in L.A. 2020: a version biennial, started as a pitch for an ongoing news program to air on national cable television. After several networks declined his initial proposal, Joseph’s project took the form of a two-channel installation, first installed as a permanent work in The Underground Museum’s bookstore. On the occasion of the Hammer’s fifth biennial, Joseph has collaborated with Los Angeles Nomadic Division to present his installation at 13 satellite venues that expand across the city’s southbound neighborhoods—one of the only works in the exhibition currently accessible due to the county mandates on museum closures. BLKNWS® plays primarily in Black- and brown-owned businesses, including Hank’s Mini Market, Bloom & Plume Coffee, Natraliart Jamaican Restaurant, Patria Coffee Roasters, Touched By An Angel, Sole Folks, and Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen. 

At each venue, two television monitors, set side by side, recontextualize the representation of the Black experience across media at large, with footage pulled from news media, music videos, and TikTok. The work reclaims and collages instances of Black assembly and Black joy as they beam in a rapid but steady tempo: an interview with comedian Richard Pryor on The Dick Cavett Show (1985); a clip from Anita Hill’s Senate testimony, featuring now-President Joe Biden (1991); and a clip from RMR’s music video “Rascal” (2020). Playing in spaces of local commerce, while customers order a cup of coffee or cross groceries off their checklist, BLKNWS® evokes an incidental provocation, communicating the hopeful assertion that a new way to engage with mass media is possible.

At Bloom & Plume Coffee, residents of Filipinotown can catch glimpses of BLKNWS® while passing by the Temple Street storefront. When I visited, the voices emitted by the installation blended with, and were obscured by, the music of the coffee shop. Perhaps Joseph, anticipating this conglomeration of sounds, purposefully included written words across the video stream—large, uppercase phrases like “a spiritual commitment,” “we see you,” or “emancipated spaces” are occasionally animated on top of the sourced footage. Taken alone, these axioms prophesize a call to action without uttering any additional words. They summon a subtle but unavoidable lineage of resistance.

Kahlil Joseph, BLKNWS® (2018–ongoing). Two-channel fugitive newscast. Installation view, Made in L.A. 2020: a version, Sole Folks, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Each iteration of BLKNWS® is adapted according to its location. Such is the case with the version playing at Hank’s Mini Market, for which Joseph consulted the archive of The Liberator, a Los Angeles-based newspaper founded by political activist J. L. Edmonds in 1900. Published until 1914, the news periodical promoted Black-owned businesses and espoused the importance of homeownership and education. The video monitors are installed on top of a large-scale, wallpapered photograph of the Edmonds family at the dinner table, taken in 1919. The black-and-white portrait, depicting 16 family members looking toward the camera, illustrates the continuation of community support and entrepreneurship that characterizes Black journalism: empowerment through knowledge. 

With the advent of television, print newspapers were superseded by broadcast networks. They served as the primary source of information, selling airtime for advertisements and entertaining audiences in exchange for their attention. Critical theorist McKenzie Wark has argued that today, advertisers no longer have to amuse their audiences; instead, they craft personalized algorithms by collecting data from users, free of cost¹. In the excruciating exchange of roles, it would seem that the discriminatory portrayals that were first confabulated on television have now transferred to the digital realm, continuing to stereotype and criminalize the Black body. Thus, the exchange of information that occurs online generates capital for media platforms while normalizing the commodification of Blackness for viewers.

BLKNWS® disrupts this transaction. In one pre-recorded clip, actress Amandla Stenberg, VICE News correspondent Alzo Slade, and independent curator Helen Molesworth appear as guest BLKNWS® editors in a segment about domestic terrorism and gun violence. While the inclusion of these fictional characters within a stream of real events and video footage could appear deceiving, it also heightens the status of truth and fiction within contemporary news media. On the walls of Natraliart Jamaican Restaurant, Joseph’s project coexists with a separate television set displaying news coverage that clashes with the alternate version offered by BLKNWS®. The fundamental problem with the capitalization of information is that it is prone to false narratives and, when offered no other alternative, conjures up the illusion of truth. 

Driving home after visiting four of the satellite locations, I noticed two colossal billboards flanking either side of the 110 Freeway. They advertised luxury cars and cellphones—the fantasy of mass consumerism a contrast to the reality of almost 11 million Americans currently unemployed. Stuck in traffic, I thought about the way Joseph’s video monitors expose the capitalization of information and, like these two billboards, imposes itself on communal spaces; except his work contests the current inflow of information rather than conform to its nature. Thus, each satellite venue anticipates an emerging transformation in media engagement—one that centers the untold stories of Black communities otherwise marginalized by media and consumer structure. This is BLKNWS®’s incidental provocation.

This review was originally published in Carla issue 23.

Kahlil Joseph, BLKNWS® (2018–ongoing). Two-channel fugitive newscast. Installation view, Made in L.A. 2020: a version, Touched By An Angel / SON. Studio, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Nahui Garcia is an art historian and curator currently living in Los Angeles. She is an MA candidate in the Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere Program at USC Roski School of Art and Design. 

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