/// Naturally, as a deep fan, I get frustrated with the way that general media + haters depict Ye (fka Kanye West). And at the same time, Ye’s art form is obviously difficult to defend. But I will make a very public attempt to do so following recent events. I believe that Ye is the most important artist of our times, and one of the most important of all time. As a friend (that I will keep anonymous) said recently over text ‘some people’s entire existence is art and not really their choice’ ///
The business of art is no longer the communication of thoughts or feelings which are to be conceptually ordered, but a direct participation in an experience. The whole tendency of modern communication...is towards participation in a process, rather than apprehension of concepts.
— Marshall McLuhan
Saul Tenser is an artist of the inner landscape. Creation of art is often associated with pain. And pain, as we know, is always associated with sleep.
— Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg (2022)
Don’t hold on. It is possible to be post-[insert here]. If you’re feeling it, recognize that it is true. It is simply about → courage. The courage to kill your heroes. The courage to kill an entire class. The courage to recognize that you’re next.
What is going on??? Does it even matter???
Ye debuted a “white lives matter” long sleeve on the Paris runway. (And over the course of writing this piece, new insta posts and tweets have almost nuked multiple sit down sessions of work.)
Does he have another redemption arc in him? What does it meannn??? How are we here??? I write this while sipping wine at a round table of friends at 324 Grand. Two musicians. An actor. Two directors. Luca and myself. We fear of the tragic event that launches the global mass reset. It’s a growing subconscious object that keeps presenting itself as an option in these environments.
Iran is up in a needed revolution. Elon is buying Twitter. Russia is russ-ing. China and Taiwan. Tech companies are still rebranding because they have nothing (zing!) else to do.
Now I’m writing in the morning. My mind, like the morning after ketamine, is a placid lake waiting for my first thought to land like a morning duck skimming the water with it’s feet before it splashes. But instead, they land like a barrage of chores from my Mom on a high school Saturday morning.
Let’s start with subverting objects.
Before Ye in the MAGA hat, there was Ye in the confederate flag bomber jacket. This is Duchamp. This is how we take an object, put it in an anti-environment or a hyper-environment, and redefine the object we thought we knew.
This is the Black community taking “nigga” and making it mass scale friendly slang towards each other. How much more powerful might it be to redirect all the energy wrapped in something as critical as a flag, and put it on the sleeve to the mass reaction of “sheeeeeeeesh that’s hard”.
React how you want. Any energy is good energy. The confederate flag represented slavery in a way. That’s my abstract take on what I know about it, right? So I wrote the song ‘New Slaves’. So I took the confederate flag and made it my flag. It’s my flag now.
— Ye
I think it’s fair to say this trick was pulled off well, he freaked it like Duchamp. How do we level up now? That was a historic object, it’s a little obvious. It’s clean. Wrap yourself in a bad flag and sing about the new powers at play controlling the current metas.
What’s the current thing? One of the most divisive presidencies, with a clear referential object → MAGA Hat. Can the subversion work again, can the trick be pulled off, what’s the prestige moment?
Wyoming Era Ye is too vast a subject to try and bring into this essay. I need to stay focused on the inversion of objects, performance art, and the hero’s journey. Or else my mind will explode.
Let’s look at “Make America Great Again” as a separate slogan, devoid of Trumpism. I’ve talked about it broadly across many essays, but probably most clearly in creative directing the USA. America does need to be made great. Doesn’t matter if you thought America was great before or not.
We throw all of our energy to developing a vaccine to a novel virus within the year. And we enjoy the freedom of choosing to debate taking it or not. WHAT A COUNTRY!!! That’s America babyyyyy.
But I think it’s clear that we have a lack of vision as a country. I don’t even feel the need to clarify that statement. Ye comments that the hat made him “feel like superman”. Why? Look at Ye’s entire agenda since Yeezus and his priorities in Wyoming. He wants to build new forms of shelter and community structures, by openly referencing Victor Gruen. Launching schools with new curriculum (regardless of how you feel about it). It’s towards a universal good life.
And it would be him redesigning the hat, speaking out against identity politics programming, and more that would land him in the oval office. Regardless of Trump’s own agenda (which was obvious), hold that side-by-side to Obama calling him a jackass… The hat act led him to sharing design concepts with a sitting president. And then walk away from the hat once the act was done.
Formula: Wholeheartedly speed run the current divisive object → alienating part of the audience and causing discussion. Pull off a magic trick → sharing design with the sitting president. Abandon object if it remains to hot, and seek absolution through new creation.
“Don’t kill a poet”
Ye cares about black lives.
Ye’s White Lives Matters is a comment on the status quo.
Ye’s Black Lives Matters is a comment on how society frames independent revolutionary actions into a limited space of grand narratives.
When an artist like Ye challenges those framed spaces - in a dialectical way - he is persecuted. He puts the grand narratives at risk.
Black Lives Matter is an example of a movement that oppressors tolerate, commercialize, and use to cleanse themselves from international and historical guilt.
When Ye says that Black Lives Matter is a scam, he means that nothing really changed. Blood still covers sidewalks.
Ye proves that if artists have an opinion in territories that are unknown and new, like any true revolutionary, they are assaulted.
Ye is an artist, Ye cares about all lives, all people, and he is working against all oppression. Ye is an artist with independent power.
Grand narratives created by politics and media will always be in conflict with the artist. The artist is ultimately above the grand narratives.
When I see these conflicts happening over and over again I see the persecution of the artist who is trying to be at the avant-garde for all of us. Artists should not be judged for the form of their expression because they have a dialectic way of articulating meanings.
On November 5, 1975 at Pasolini funeral Alberto Moravia cried:
“The poet should be sacred. There aren’t many poets. Maybe three are born in a century. We have lost this poet, he created civil poetry, he had the courage to tell the truth, he was a unique witness who tried to provoke beneficial reactions in the inert body of Italian society. He had a an absolute lack of calculations and prudent compromises. He was different in that he was disinterested, uncorrupted. You don’t kill a poet.”
Vanessa Beecroft
- From a now archived Ye instagram post
Vanessa Beecroft is an Italian performance artist that has collaborated with Ye for a number of years. She has her own list of controversies, if that discredits her breakdown of the white lives matter long-sleeve, that is valid. My point in including it is because I believe it is a rare piece of explanation of a Ye work and broadcasted by him.
The ability of the artist to reflect the present is one of their greatest channeling purposes. I could not tell you the last time I thought of the BLM organization or movement. And yet by inverting the language very simply and viscerally, as it was done during the peak of the movement/protests (which Ye also participated in) it was able to invoke critique of “traumatization” from a reporter at the show.
But to pull from the quote at the top of the piece, the point is to engage one in “a participation of process”. To which, the case can be made that a new hero’s journey has been set on it’s way. How fast might it go?
Structurally, this piece fits directly within the canon of Ye’s work. It does not feel like a departure. It does not feel like an “episode”, despite some continually weaponizing Ye’s reported mental health journey as a way to discredit his creation.
Ye consistently references his parents’ Black Panther Party roots. This deeply informs his own identity politics.
In the spirit of liberation,
we understand that they want everybody in the party in jail.
If we know
that if we try to figure out
and separate
and divide
who should go
and who shouldn’t go,
we’d spend more time
doing that
than working for the people.
So, the quick solution,
the speedy one:
Nobody goes!
Nobody goes!
We all stay right here
with the people
because we love the people.
Okay, you can put your hands down right now.
All power to all people.
We say white power to white people.
Brown power to brown people.
Yellow power to yellow people.
Black power to black people.
X power to those we left out.
Panther power to the vanguard party.- Fred Hampton, Blank Panther Rally
By invoking texts from his father, in a post on Instagram, Ye utilizes a historically respected Black movement organization’s credibility towards his own messaging.
Like any messaging, one can say that Fred Hampton / the Black Panthers got this wrong. Or that it doesn’t fit in the current needs of the movement. Whatever the reasoning. The point is that it creates an appeal to previous authority, which can’t be (in my opinion) abruptly pushed to the side, and must be considered in it’s new performative context.
It is evening in the Poconos, I spent the day roofing with my dad. Ghost Town plays over the speakers while the sun shoots through golden red leaves.
Part of Ye’s art form, is about being Andy Kauffman on steroids. Intentionality of forcing hate through acts and broadcasting it for mass consumption. For those that aren’t tapped in, Andy was the inter-gender wrestling champion of the world. Wrestling exclusively women for a period of time, remaining undefeated, and opening the challenge to women to pin him for a cash reward. (he did a lot of other things too) It was only revealed later that some of the women were also performance artists that were in collaboration with Andy. Kauffman uses the kayfabe to nth degree.
I believe understanding Kauffman’s art is vital in understanding Ye’s speed-run-hero’s-arc style of life. In Ye’s episode of “My Next Guest” with David Letterman he gives us all a direct line to this relationship. Openly referencing his updated Kauffman inspired style.
I believe that all artists turn to performance artists. This should not be surprising in our always on technological environment. When potential for perception moves at the speed of light, one is always illuminated. Persistent pose.
For persistent pose to not appear as absolutely unhinged, the artist needs a cast of co-conspirators. Ye is always in collaboration with some of the most creative people of our generation. These creatives have acted as vessels to bring out further belief, process, history, damnation, salvation.
Previously Tremaine Emory (founder of Denim Tears and the current creative director of Supreme) has been at the round table of big Ye moments. He may be around this one again. Bringing out the history of Virgil Abloh and Ye’s strained relationship, particularly as it revolves around the creative director role at Louis Vuitton. A role that is once again open as a result of Virgil’s passing.
In a selection of broadcasted texts between Ye and Tremaine, during a time where any conversation going through Ye’s phone is going to be broadcasted thus creating an obvious methodology of performance, we see a potential for an arc post-initial-villain-act of the shirt.
Starting with the damnation of Ye not being invited to Virgil’s private funeral. “That’s the shit that can’t address". Moving to their relationship formation with Tremaine’s work on Endless/Blond/Boys Don’t Cry leading to getting hired by Ye. And ending with calling out corporate power structures influence over youth culture and Black creatives.
Was it ever resolved though? Before we could get to that, Ye gets a temporary ban from Insta. And moves to Twitter on a whole new thread. 2024.
The potential performance has the stage go dark in the first act…
Crimes of the Future (2022) by Cronenberg has been one of my favorite films of the year. Partially because I felt like I could draw a straight line from things I see today, into that world. From performance art to micro-plastics. The story is presented through the lens of performance artists to bring out the nature of the environment of the story.
Performance art has the ability to speed-run a narrative through participation of the audience. The film pulls this out through it’s consumption-within-consumption type of feeling.
Ye does this continually through provoking controversy towards his larger mission of questioning and subverting our cultural norms. In order to reveal, through acts of creativity, a new paradigm. Whether it is sonic or footwear.
It’s easy to write off Ye’s work/actions as simplistic, mental health episodes, generally misguided. But I don’t view it as such. It obviously makes it hard as a fan, and made writing this piece in the top 3 of hardest newsletter’s I’ve done. There’s plenty of sensitive material to be aware of, most living along the dialectics of identity.
I view Ye’s artist life and mission towards greatness as a spiritual test of our own tolerance. Our tolerance to be challenged across different mediums. A reminder of how easy it is to be comfortable with the mediocre, to be comfortable with our current institutions. When you take a moment, despite opinions on the delivery, often times you’ll see… there’s a point there. One that you can choose to take on yourself, and push through your own power. And that’s the point. Setting off your own hero’s journey. Your own arc.
Go listen to all my music, it's the codes of self-esteem. It's the codes of who you are. If you're a Kanye West fan, you're not a fan of me, you're a fan of yourself. You will believe in yourself.
— Ye
We're currently led by the least noble, least talented, least respected, least respectful people—politicians. Period. But the world could be saved through art and design. Art is something that in definition I think is a really close thing to love, and love is really close to God, and God is the master creator.
— Ye
Bonus for making it this far:
I want to share this note for the current young design/creative class. There is a group of emergent ~broad scope creatives~ that are deeply inspired by Ye. As they should be. He gave us Yeezus, Yeezy, the craziest music videos, a floating stage, inspiring interviews, humor, Sunday Service, everything that was made in Wyoming.
The obvious understanding is that if Ye likes their work, they can get pulled onto a project, and that does wonders for their career and visibility. However, the obvious effect is simply designing derivate Yeezy-esq work. This creates a near cottage economy and influencer structure… in short Ye is his own sub-culture. His references are the sub-culture’s references. It’s a one-to-one relationship.
And ultimately it holds us back. I saw the best minds of my generation ruined by working to get us to click on ads. Similarly we are seeing some of the best creative minds of our generation trying to get a Ye like… Similarly to the Mars talk I’ve been shilling, we have to break the idea that this is the creative top.
But I get it. Talk to anyone that has worked in the Ye camp to a positive effect. They’ll tell you, “Ye is the leader”. And we are living in the desert of leaders. A complete lack of vision. Ye is the most important artist.
But it’s time to start cultivating a vision to be post-Ye. Build new boats to leave Ye-island towards something new.
I don’t do edits really, so excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.
Thanks so much for giving me your attention. I hope it was worth it, if not… unsubscribing will not hurt my feelings, and will give you back time you literally cannot have back.
Much love.
Live in the light