Black Celebration

Tony Cokes

1988 | 00:17:17 | United States | English | B&W and Color | 4:3 | Video

Collection: Single Titles

Tags: African-American, Dance, Interview, Performance, Politics, Race

Subtitled A Rebellion against the Commodity, this engaged reading of the urban black riots of the 1960s references Guy Debord’s Situationist text, “The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy,” Internationale Situationniste #10 (March 1966). Along with additional commentary adapted from Barbara Kruger and musicians Morrissey and Skinny Puppy, the text posits rioting as a refusal to participate in the logic of capital and an attempt to de-fetishize the commodity through theft and gift. Cokes asks, “How do people make history under conditions pre-established to dissuade them from intervening in it?” 

This title is also available on Tony Cokes Videoworks: Volume 1.

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