Monopolated Light and Power
Book
Paperback/Softback
978-1-7393939-8-4 (ISBN)
Description
Essays on the the political, visual and aesthetics of music videos of the 1990s and 2000s Hiphop and R&B.
The narrator to Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man squats a basement with only a turntable and whose ceiling he has adorned with 1,369 light bulbs, powered by electricity poached from Monopolated Light and Power, to create the brightest spot in New York City. In 1993 Sean 'Puffy' Combs founds the Bad Boy Entertainment label and, in the years that follow, leads the mainstreaming of New York hip-hop and RnB in global popular culture. Between them, these moments mark the changing coordinates, from the middle to the end of the twentieth century, of an aesthetics of light and the music of economic domination. This collectively written book takes Bad Boy Entertainment as the starting point for a reflection that intersects financial capitalism and gentrification, the motion of light and the nature of value, death and mourning, the history of Black music and millennial video aesthetics. In doing so it seeks to outline the way a music label typically derided as trifling commercialism incarnated the passing of a novel experience of luminosity and a new state of global power.
The narrator to Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man squats a basement with only a turntable and whose ceiling he has adorned with 1,369 light bulbs, powered by electricity poached from Monopolated Light and Power, to create the brightest spot in New York City. In 1993 Sean 'Puffy' Combs founds the Bad Boy Entertainment label and, in the years that follow, leads the mainstreaming of New York hip-hop and RnB in global popular culture. Between them, these moments mark the changing coordinates, from the middle to the end of the twentieth century, of an aesthetics of light and the music of economic domination. This collectively written book takes Bad Boy Entertainment as the starting point for a reflection that intersects financial capitalism and gentrification, the motion of light and the nature of value, death and mourning, the history of Black music and millennial video aesthetics. In doing so it seeks to outline the way a music label typically derided as trifling commercialism incarnated the passing of a novel experience of luminosity and a new state of global power.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-7393939-8-4 (9781739393984)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Ashwani Sharma is a London based independent scholar. His interdisciplinary teaching, research and writing interests include: race, history and anti-colonial and black cultural theory; diasporic and global film and contemporary art; urban culture and music; open access publishing and radical study. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, an associate of the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN), UAL, and the Sonic Screen Lab, UAL. Ashwani is completing a book examining the political aesthetics of diasporic culture. He is the founding co-editor of darkmatter journal, and the co-editor of Disorienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Music (Zed Books). He is an advisor for the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies journal, and for Soundings: A journal on politics and culture. Ashwani writes and performs poetry. He has worked for the BBC and in independent film/sound, DJs, and has been an aeronautical engineer. Edward George is a writer and broadcaster. Founder of Black Audio Film Collective, George wrote and presented the ground-breaking science fiction documentary Last Angel of History (1996). George is part of the multimedia duo Flow Motion, and the electronic music group Hallucinator. He and hosts Sound of Music (Threads Radio), Kuduro - Electronic Music of Angola (Counterflows). George's series The Strangeness of Dub (Morley Radio) dives into reggae, dub, versions and versioning, drawing on critical theory, social history, and a deep and a wide cross-genre musical selection. Paul Rekret is the author of Down With Childhood: Pop Music and the Crisis of Innocence, Derrida and Foucault: Philosophy, Politics and Poetics, and editor of George Caffentzis's Clipped Coins. He is currently writing a book on work songs titled Take This Hammer and has published widely on contemporary cultural and political theory. He is a member of Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective and teaches political theory at Richmond American International University. Louis Moreno's research explores the spatial, historical and cultural modes of financial capitalismwith a particular focus on architecture, urbanism and music. Louis is a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures and the Center for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University of London. Louis is a member of the collectives freethought, Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective and Unspecified Enemies.