Soda_Jerk
Soda_Jerk | Dan Angeloro | Australia b.1977 | Dominique Angeloro | Australia b.1979 | Astro Black: A History of Hip-Hop (Episodes -1 -2) (still) 2007-10 | Post production with Sam Smith HDVD file, 4 channel video projection exhibited from hard drive, 16:9, colour, sound, 25:24mins, edition of 10 | © Courtesy the artists
Sisters Danielle and Dominique Angeloro comprise Soda_Jerk, two remix artists who cut and paste video footage in much the same way as a turntablist creates music. Working exclusively with found material, the duo’s videos offer both witty commentaries and thoroughly original narratives.
An episodic work spanning four chapters, Astro Black: A History of Hip-Hop (Episodes -1-2) 2007-10 draws on a range of audio and video footage, including music clips, films, television broadcasts and scratch records. The absurd intergalactic narrative combines pop culture, ‘Afrofuturist’ science fiction myth and radical racial politics. By jamming audiovisual materials of the past together with futuristic movements, Soda_Jerk has created a work that is part documentary and part sonic fiction – a record of the past and for the future.
At its heart, Astro Black is a reworking of the 1974 film Space is the Place, which follows free-jazz musician Sun Ra on his music-powered journey to 1970s America, and his quest to stamp out racial inequality. The existing narrative is torn up and mashed back together to connect the cosmic origins of Sun Ra’s music and the stylistics of future hip-hop heroes such as DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash.
The resulting montage of now-classic beats, archival footage, and pop culture presents us with an extraterrestrial history of hip-hop and in the process, uncovers an empowering connection between place, race and outer space. Within Soda_Jerk’s Astro Black universe the science of pop culture is collapsed with the art of time travel.
2010 artists | Philip Brophy | Nigel Helyer | Chris Howlett |Isobel Knowles & Van Sowerwine | Wade Marynowsky | Soda_Jerk | Lynette Wallworth
