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Play, download and edit the free video Jibade-Khalil Huffman: Black Twitter in the Hour of Chaos (excerpt).

Black Twitter in the Hour of Chaos
2018
Single-channel video, color, sound
44 minutes, 55 seconds
Courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi

Huffman is interested in the modality of informal Internet communities on social media sites like Twitter and Reddit, which allow for rapid-fire discussion, arguments, and call-outs using short-form text and imagery. These subcommunities, such as Black Twitter, have become a cultural force in shaping and challenging American media coverage, particularly as it relates to the criminal justice system and acts of police brutality against Black people.

Black Twitter in the Hour of Chaos riffs on the title of the1988 Public Enemy song “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” which details a prison uprising ignited by a Black conscientious objector. In this work, Huffman knits together imagery from a plethora of music videos, stand-up performances, film and TV clips, and viral videos. Many feature Black American cultural figures from the last fifty years, including Kenan Thompson, Jay-Z, Ice Cube, Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle, Kahwi Leonard, Aretha Franklin, Prince, and Gladys Knight, among others. At the center of this media landscape, Huffman’s semiautobiographical protagonist, played by an actor, appears isolated and disconnected, his loneliness contrasting with the generally joyful or humorous montage. The character’s identity remains obscured throughout, presented in fragments interrupted by successive video and audio clips. Huffman suggests that one’s self-image can be complicated and undermined by how others see and represent you.

Jibade-Khalil Huffman: Now That I Can Dance
Tufts University Art Galleries
Aidekman Arts Center / Medford
September 8, 2020—March 2021

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