BREAKING
05.14.2019

"BLKNWS is a two-channel video that imagines a cable news network animated by a cosmopolitan, culturally omnivorous, politically engaged, art-loving, and intellectual black sensibility — a bit like if BET merged with CNN and then merged with Artforum and The New Yorker. While it is presented as an uninterrupted flow of images, clips, segments, and pop music in a way that gives it an associative artistic quality — and echoes the video style made famous by [Arthur] Jafa, a mentor and friend of Joseph’s who name-checked him in his Golden Lion speech — it was actually originally created as a pitch to cable networks for a real-life news show. Because all the major networks turned down the idea, it now exists in the Biennial as the evocation of a counter-factual creative vision, i.e. an artwork." 
— Andrew Goldstein, "Why TV Executives Should Make Artist Kahlil Joseph’s ‘BLKNWS’ Network, a Star of the Venice Biennale, Into a Reality," artnet, May 14, 2019