They say that it takes about 7 years 4 u 2 recycle all the cells in your body. This took place abt 2 Pierre’s ago.
Chakaras & I went to art school together. We had several small adventures during the time we knew each other… our last big one was a road trip to the Million Man March in October 1995.
I was inspired to get this photo essay/album scanned and uploaded by his untimely passing last week. It’s dedicated to him, his memory, and all of those whose lives he touched.
You always hear the cliche about the journey and the destination. We’re all destined to end up in the same place, but i am thankful that our journeys crossed paths at some point. I am better because of it. Thank you, Chakaras. rest in peace.
“A new performance art project that we have been working on with RED CLAY called High and Low, the name is based on the Kurosawa film with the same title. We take High art to common places and see what reactions we get.” – Shawn Peters
This is part of a social experiment/art project I’m working on which involves re-imagining everyday, often overlooked forms of written communication.
If you’d like to make an audio response please call the number on the posters, any response you feel would be welcome. I will be posting the audio responses when I have completed the entire art piece. Thank you for taking part.
Please feel free share this link or to download the PDF and print/post these posters wherever you see fit.
I’ve been doing some soul searching, I’m finding some good stuff. I’m being pushed reluctantly into the foreground, a place that i purposefully abandoned several years ago. However situations keep occurring where my hermit tendencies don’t serve me. I am also being informed that my style of perfectionism doesn’t serve me. My art is like a cockroach in that for every one piece of mine that you see there are about 30 that you don’t see. Growing up I used to throw away sketch books, rhyme books and journals because they were not “perfect.” It wasn’t till i got married that i really started to save my work & even then many things never saw the light of day. I learned that just because something comes easy to me doesn’t mean it lacks value. So here i am unwilling to put things out there that are not “perfect” but in desperate need to share and make room for all the new stuff. The first challenge I put to myself is to be “out there” more. I’ve decided to do so by starting a Video Blog (which i believe is called a V-log). It is tentatively titled “2 minutes with your imaginary friend Pierre!” I begin shooting later this week…see you soon..well…you’ll see me soon but you…you get it…so yeah.
Duke professor Mark Anthony Neal and Grammy winning producer 9th Wonder (pictured left) are using SunMoonChild – amazing song by imani uzuri, amazing video by Pierre Bennu – as part of the midterm exam for their course, ’sampling soul.’ The course is about black cultural production and the tradition of borrowing/remixing/sampling and how it all relates to today’s legal issues of intellectual property rights and copyright law. Since YouTube just removed SunMoonChild after three years this issue cuts particularly close for us.
He’s made the midterm public on his blog to encourage a wider dialogue and wider exposure to the ideas. Stop by and give it a read, comment if you can! )
–jb.
As a DJ, an artist, a sometime teacher, and the son of an academic, I will never get tired of marveling at the intersection of HipHop and academia. It’s an honor to have my work thought of as contributing to this discussion.
I was tweeting today in response to media coverage of a white, male suicide bomber who flew his plane into an IRS building in Texas, and the coverage of Tiger Woods’ press conference about his marital infidelities.
b/c that’s what i do, instead of blogging as often as i should. I tweet.
anyway, I wondered why so-called ‘news’ organizations were not treating the former as a terrorist attack, and why we were still hearing about tiger woods at all.
in my string of tweets, i mentioned racism as marketing, and one of my twitter folks asked for clarification. I doubted I could explain what I meant in 140 characters or less, so I wrote this post. enjoy.
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The mark of a great marketing campaign is when the idea or slogan transcends the product. it attaches to the cultural consciousness, and when attached to the product, makes the product greater.
During one of the long conversations I have with myself while doing chores a tangent formed in my head. The things that are now considered the elements of hip hop (among them breaking, mcing, graffiti) were part of street games I remember people playing like skelly or handball, street football etc. Well, while the guys were on one side of the street, what did we see the girls playing…DOUBLE DUTCH!
The thought that crossed my mind was what if Double Dutch was the thing what “blew up” instead of hip hop? Perhaps I’ve been watching too many twilight zones but what if hip hop were double dutch …the following were just the one i could remember from a very long list of very bizarre thoughts. Feel free to add on…
IF HIP HOP WERE DOUBLE DUTCH…
- The best that ever did it would have been from Brooklyn.
- There would be double dutch beefs.
- they would have platinum telephone cords ropes.
- They would objectify men in their videos.
- They would not give male jumpers the credit they deserve.
- There would be “positive” jumpers & “gangsta” jumpers.
- There would be jumpers that dumb it down by jumping with one rope.
- Turners would be replaced by something digital.
- it would be dead already.
- 40 year old women would be wearing Gucci print Jellys talking about they’re maintaining the culture.
Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale, using audience participation, at the event “Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus”, from the 2009 World Science Festival, June 12, 2009.VERY COOL! (hit the pic for the link)
- Dear guy with missing tooth laughing at the duct tape situation my tail light is in: he who haseth not teeth is in no position to laugh publicly about anything.
- Dear record store I miss you.
- Dear ears, dude are you slowly going deaf? If so tell me but tell me really loud cause I can’t hear too good.
- Dear supermarket can we get rid of those dividers? Are they really necessary? This is my stuff right here, all that stuff way back there not touching my stuff is her stuff. I mean really, are you that fast that one day you just rang up everyone’s stuff together? [Read more]
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- Dear guy with missing tooth laughing at the duct tape situation my tail light is in: he who haseth not teeth is in no position to laugh publicly about anything.
