m.A.A.d., 2014
- Medium
- Double screen projection
- Dimensions
- Running time: 15min, 26sec
- Accession Number
- 2015.41
- Credit
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Gift of the artist
This lush and layered portrait of Los Angeles, with a soundtrack by Kendrick Lamar, is suffused with joy, heartache, and a poet’s attention to detail. MOCA exhibited Kahlil Joseph’s film in 2015 and acquired it for the collection in that moment. A decade later, it remains a quintessential document of its time and place.
“m.A.A.d,” is a double screen projection that is a lush portrait of contemporary LA. The camera sinuously glides through predominantly Black neighborhoods, pausing to capture quotidian moments that are suffused with creativity, joy, and sadness. The split screen divides the viewer’s attention, and alludes to the history of auteur cinema, a form of filmmaking pioneered by French director Jean Luc Godard, which sacrificed linear narrative for experimentation with the formal and political possibilities of filmmaking. “m.A.A.d” extends this tradition of formal experimentation by crossing the wires of music videos, amateur film footage, and moments of magical realism. The two-part projection may also slyly evoke philosopher W.E.B. Dubois’s early twentieth century concept of “double consciousness,” a psychological description of Black life in America. The film’s verbally dense and thick booming soundtrack, provided by Kendrick Lamar, adds yet another layer to this prismatic account of contemporary life in LA.