Know Your Enemy

Art Jones / United States / 1990 / 30 min.

synopsis

Since the beginning of its inception, the band Public Enemy and the entire rap scene have had to face politically motivated stereotypes, many of which were propagated in society by racially prejudiced news media. This experimental documentary, consisting of period records, testimonies of actors, and excerpts of lyrics from the rap collective, is a radical deconstruction of the ideological dimension of the popular machine, which likes to invert and rewrite the stories of music performers to suit the perspective of the majority of society. The film can therefore be seen as an ironic audiovisual appeal that follows in the spirit of the eponymous title “Know your enemy!” precisely.

„My work involves a documentary process that moves into experimental territory and I`m very invested in looking at the image, on the possibilities for the image to express something more personal than the objective idea, we usually think about when we are thinking about documentary filmmaking.“ A. Jones

biography

Art Jones lives in New York and his work skates along the edge of film and fine art. He frequently collaborates with musicians as a VJ or music video director. His creative work combines pop music with images of pop-cultural significance, often to great acclaim, whether it be a film work or a work intended for exhibition spaces. Jones is particularly interested in the relationship between visual culture, history, and political power.