Arthur Jafa + Robert Hood - APEX
The Vinyl Factory presents a limited edition release of Arthur Jafa's iconic APEX film, now on show at 180 Studios as part of the Paradigm Shift exhibition.
Composed from 841 still and moving images, APEX compresses Jafa’s expansive collection drawn from cinema, music, and news media. Images surge past, interweaving figures like Mickey Mouse, Tupac Shakur, and Sojourner Truth, as well as scenes of violence, spiritual iconography, and science fiction elements into a stroboscopic montage soundtracked by Detroit techno pioneer Robert Hood, a founding member of Underground Resistance. Set to a pulsating beat, interlaced with heart monitor sounds, it is rhythm - rather than narrative - that governs what the work asks us to feel.
The intensity of the remix, with the familiar yet harrowing pace of the appropriated images, places the power in the artist’s hands. It shifts the gaze by taking ownership of the found media and challenges perceptions of Black identity. Jafa conceived APEX as a conceptual model for a grand, unrealised sci-fi epic, aiming to craft a cinematic experience that echoes the emotional depth and complexity of Black music in what he terms “Black Visual Intonation.” In APEX, duration, repetition, and tempo function like instrumentation, registering ecstasy and grief across a century of mass-circulated image production. He demonstrates how the dominant image economy can be remixed and re-envisioned to assert Black life, representation and resistance.
* Limited edition pressing of the soundtrack to Arthur Jafa's iconic APEX film
* Artwork by Arthur Jafa
* Music by Robert Hood
* Pressed on 180-gram black heavyweight vinyl
* Uncoated outer sleeve
* Coated inner sleeve
* Limited edition of 1000 copies
* Hand-numbered
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