Juke

2006
Digital Video

There are hundreds (if not thousands) of unspoken rules of engagement in this never ending fight of racism in the United States. Popular music has been a dynamic changing battleground. Music has always been segregated. Juke is a musical installation that wrestles with serious issues in the most unfamiliar way. Can music be either black or white? Can song be used as an instrument to provoke a conversation about race?

Jefferson Pinder is exploring segregation with his new musical installation Juke. Taking a note from Andy Warhol’s Screen Test’s, Pinder directs a series of music-based performances. The spectator is invited to watch intimate narratives of ten Afro- Americans that goes beyond the actual music itself. Placed in front of stark white background, each performer is in contrast to their surroundings. In a minimal presentation, they all utilize music as a vehicle to wrestle and connect with identity.

Influenced by pop-culture, Pinder assembles an anthology of powerful soliloquies. In Juke, music is the driving force for a social experiment, in which the underlying challenge is for viewer to get beyond seeing in black and white.