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Legion. An amalgamated journal.
  • About Legion
    "I do not know whether mine is a profession, or a trade, or what not. It is not yet learned, and in every instance has been practised before being studied .... It is not one but legion." —Henry David Thoreau, to the Secretary of the Harvard College Class of 1837, in response to an inquiry on his employment.

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Audio/video

The relationship between music and image is usually one where the artistic power dynamics are pretty bare. In a music video, the music dictates the images entirely. In a film, the music is subservient to the images.

But the new video for Justice’s Stress, off the Cross EP, resists that structure, and brings music and video into a closer equilibrium than I’ve ever seen before. Is it a short film about Parisian racial tensions for which Justice wrote a soundtrack? Or is it a song about discord which a director chose to drop into that setting? I can’t say that it’s clearly one or the other.

—Garrett Dash Nelson

May 3rd, 2008 at 2:02 pm

But perhaps you disagree

One response so far

  • [ # ] Henry Cowles — May 6, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    Agreed – hard to take, and hard to parse out. Better engagement here than elsewhere. For example, see a semi-constipated musing on one of the Hype Machine’s blogs:

    http://music.allansworld.info/2008/05/03/justice-stress-and-white-williams-new-violence-music-vids/

    Violent art raises questions beyond those of artistic motive and format-hopping, and this video in particular seems (to me) to challenge assumptions about the role and reaction of the viewer that go further than the engagement of two artists and artistic forms with one another.

    Definitely a highlight of the † phenomenon..