#blknws

I've been caught up in the mind-boggling vortex of Kahlil Joseph's 2025 film BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, and am taking longer than expected to process it. I may just be a BLKNWS blogger from here on out tbqh

BLKNWS was amazing and poignant for me in the way it didn’t feel voyeuristic or commodifying of Black ppl the way most media featuring us does. It artfully interspersed cuts of talks and readings from Saidiya Haartman, Fred Moten, Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Dubois, with afro futuristic visuals and a sub-narrative of Black ppl remembering the future & past selves simultaneously in the present.

The use of sounds from the perspective of a stolen African person chained in the cargo hold on a transatlantic slave trading ship on the sea was visceral. The cuts of interviews and essays with a Ghanian man talking about confronting the legacy of his great grandfather who made his family’s wealth selling Africans into slavery to first the Portuguese and then to the Americans. The sci-fi and speculative imaginings of a transatlantic cruise ship solely ran and owned by Black diasporic ppl. Ancient African art as data centers and power cells connected to the land. The normalizing and casual showcasing of Black queer love along with heteronormative Black couples. Hope Giselle was one of the leading roles. it def had some points to say about the inherent lie of whiteness and liberalism in general. also tumblr made a prominent cameo! Kahlil has one!

There was a particular scene/quote that felt very affirming for me in regards to how i choose to feel proud about my Black unconventional family structure and my grandmother’s life & legacy that society constantly tells me i should be ashamed of. I teared up at that part lol. it hit deep.

I learned a lot from the film as well as I was affirmed by it, particularly bc my best friend is very familiar with Hartman’s literature and the Black historical figures mentioned, quoted, and featured throughout. i left feeling introspective and “full”.

It was ironic for me that it was shown to a mostly white & nonblack UC Berkeley student audience that almost turned me away at the ticket line saying they “sold out” despite the showing being advertised as free and my friend already waiting in the theater with a seat for me. 🫩 authentic Blackness behind an ivory tower paywall and antiblack white academic institutions as the guards.

it comes out in theaters soon and i recommend everyone, especially Black ppl of the diaspora, see it.

🎥 #ArtIsAWeapon Acclaimed artist/video director/filmmaker #KahlilJoseph's debut feature film "BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions" (@blknws) is playing at @ifccenter November 28-December 3, 2025 in NYC, and in theaters in other select cities. Check the website for details: https://blknws.richspirit.com

Reposted from @richspiritstudio "Adapted from Kahlil Joseph's renowned video art installation, 'BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions' is a distinctive cinematic experience that mirrors the sonic textures of a record album, weaving fiction and history in an immersive journey where the fictionalized figures of W. E. B Du Bois and Marcus Garvey join artists, musicians, Joseph's family, and even Twitter chats, in a vision for black consciousness...

BLKNWS was initially born out of the Underground Museum, first imagined by Joseph and [Academy award-winning filmmaker] Ryan Coogler as an antidote to cable news during President Trump’s 2015 campaign. It was conceived as a continuous, curated broadcast, weaving news and social media clips, and cultural artifacts into a dynamic stream intended to reflect the richness of Black life. After success as an art installation, the project now takes the form of Kahlil’s debut feature BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions."

#BLKNWS #BlackArtists

#BlackGirlMovieGeeks #UndergroundMuseum

I saw BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions at the show yesterday and they had a version of Telekinesis in it that didn't have Future or Travis Scott in it, and it made me want it so bad I just got home and made my own so I wouldn't have to find a way to extract it from the movie

Artist Noah Davis’s superb paintings are currently on view at David Zwirner gallery’s two 19th Street locations in New York until 2/22. Although his career was brief, he died in 2015, what he accomplished in his life is admirable.

From the press release–

Davis’s body of work encompasses, on the one hand, his lush, sensual, figurative paintings and, on the other, an ambitious institutional project called The Underground Museum, a black-owned-and-operated art space dedicated to the exhibition of museum-quality art in a culturally underserved African American and Latinx neighborhood in Los Angeles. The works on view will highlight both parts of Davis’s oeuvre, featuring more than twenty of his most enduring paintings, as well as models of previous exhibitions curated by Davis at The Underground Museum. The exhibition also includes a “back room,” modeled on the working offices at The Underground Museum, featuring more paintings by Davis, as well as BLKNWS by Davis’s brother Kahlil Joseph; a sculpture by Karon Davis, the artist’s widow; and Shelby George furniture, designed by Davis’s mother Faith Childs-Davis.

Helen Molesworth notes:

Noah Davis (b. Seattle, 1983; d. Ojai, California, 2015) was a figurative painter and cofounder of The Underground Museum (UM) in Los Angeles. Despite his untimely death at the age of thirty-two, Davis’s paintings are a crucial part of the rise of figurative and representational painting in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

Loneliness and tenderness suffuse his rigorously composed paintings, as do traces of his abiding interest in artists such as Marlene Dumas, Kerry James Marshall, Fairfield Porter, and Luc Tuymans. Davis’s pictures can be slightly deceptive; they are modest in scale yet emotionally ambitious. Using a notably dry paint application and a moody palette of blues, purples, and greens, his work falls into two loose categories: There are scenes from everyday life, such as a portrait of his young son, a soldier returning from war, or a housing project designed by famed modernist architect Paul Williams. And there are paintings that traffic in magical realism, surreal images that depict the world both seen and unseen, where the presence of ancestors, ghosts, and fantasy are everywhere apparent.

Generous, curious, and energetic, Davis founded, along with his wife, the sculptor Karon Davis, The Underground Museum, an artist- and family-run space for art and culture in Los Angeles. The UM began modestly—Noah and Karon worked to join three storefronts in the city’s Arlington Heights neighborhood. Davis’s dream was to exhibit “museum-quality” art in a working-class black and Latino neighborhood. In the early days of The UM, Davis was unable to secure museum loans, so he organized exhibitions of his work alongside that of his friends and family, and word of mouth spread about Davis’s unique curatorial gestures.

In 2014 Davis began organizing exhibitions using works selected from The Museum of Contemporary Art’s collection as his starting point. In the aftermath of Davis’s passing, the team of family and friends he gathered continued his work at The UM, transforming it into one of the liveliest and most important gathering places in Los Angeles for artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers, and activists.

If you are in Los Angeles, The Underground Museum is definitely worth a visit, and if you cannot make it to this exhibition in NYC- a portion of it moves there this March.