This news channel doesn’t exist, yet it feels live. Headlines scroll as archival footage cuts to memes, interviews, music videos and breaking updates. The format is familiar, but the perspective isn’t – it’s told through a distinctly Black lens.
BLKNWS® is an ongoing film and installation by artist and filmmaker Kahlil Joseph. Conceived as a new kind of TV network, it assembles found footage, news clips, original reporting, popular culture and music into a rolling broadcast. Scenes from the Civil Rights movement sit alongside social media videos, Hollywood films, animation and everyday life. Soul, rap and hip hop set the pace, shaping how images connect and how histories are felt. By layering sound and image, Joseph exposes how stories are framed, edited and repeated – and asks who has the power to define what becomes history.
Note: this work contains strobe lighting, mature themes and some coarse language
Kahlil Joseph, Onye Anyanwu & Kaneza Schaal on BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, a feature length version of the work
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