new grammar of flight

 

i'm thankful for arthur jafa's "love is the message, the message is death," which was on streaming yesterday (and you can still watch a cam of here). i'm thankful to have found my note from when i saw it in denver, part of which was "i'm thankful for something he said in the video interview outside of the exhibition, which was how part of the video was about "the beauty of appreciating another's mastery" and how, talking about limitations of the traditional freudian conception of the ego, he gave the example of jay-z always saying he's the best rapper alive, but how on his albums, he's never alone, there are always guests invited to the table."

 

i'm thankful that last night hulu surfaced in my feed the challenge, an artist documentary about luxury falconry in qatar with no narration and no talking heads, long takes of anonymous luxury SUVs with deflated tires tearing over dunes in the dessert, giant television screens in the middle of nowhere, motorcyles made of gold, and i'm thankful for the formal cherry on top of the movie, which i hate to spoil but i have to write about, which is when you're watching a scene with this weird twitchy jump cut and then you're like "oh, they're trying to enact the vision of the falcon, interesting technique" and then you realize that you're watching unedited* footage from a camera mounted on the head of an actual falcon, which is rhythmically snapping its head from side to side to scan its periphery, and then the bird takes off, in these soaring loops, and the movie creates this new grammar of flight

* (seemingly, though probably not actually)