The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, April 12, 2017 — 5A

 
COURTESY OF NATE ROBERT

SOCIAL MEDIA COLUMN

The costs and benefits of 
capturing injustice online

Whether it’s police brutality 

against 
Black 
Americans, 

unmediated violence or public 
acts of verbal and physical 
abuse, capturing and posting 
videos have become imperative 
when it comes to highlighting 
everyday 
acts 
of 
injustice. 

But what these kinds of viral 
videos portray in their content 
is almost as vital as how they 
are framed, who watches them 
and whether or not it will 
achieve its desired effect.

The most recent case of a 

viral video of injustice came 
just earlier this week when 
several 
passengers 
on 
an 

overbooked 
United 
Airlines 

flight captured something on 
their phones that has already 
caught national and online 
attention: Two aviation guards 
removed a male passenger off 
the plane by force. Based on the 
various videos of the event, the 
scene is quite disturbing. You 
can hear the collective shock 
of nearby passengers and shrill 
sound of the man’s scream, all 
while witnessing the security 
guards and the aggressive force 
in dragging the man out of his 
seat and onto the plane’s floor. 
Another video shows the man, 
his face now bloodied, running 
to the back of the plane and 
mumbling to himself: “Just kill 
me. Just kill me now. I need to 
go home.”

Since the incident occurred, 

people have expressed their 
anger 
and 
frustration 
on 

Twitter and other social media 
platforms, claiming that this 
man was unjustly taken off 
the 
plane. 
However, 
some 

online 
skeptics 
have 
tried 

to rationalize the situation, 
remarking how the man didn’t 
cooperate. It makes sense that 
people would react in both 
ways. For some, it’s a human 
instinct to empathize with 
the victim, while others might 
simply feel the need to justify 
the motive of the authority in 
question. But either way, this 
situation shouldn’t be that hard 
of an equation to solve. Even if 
the man refused to comply, the 
incident captured on camera 
is clear enough evidence that 
the way in which this man was 
taken off the plane was unruly, 

inappropriate and just plain 
wrong.

Since the beating of Rodney 

King in 1992, recording videos 
has become a powerful weapon 
in documenting injustice. With 
the universal accessibility of 
social media, these videos have 
now an even greater advantage 
of reaching audiences all over 
the world.

Camera phone videos were 

particularly influential after 
the shooting of Michael Brown, 
as they illustrated through the 
Ferguson riots, highlighted the 
issue of police brutality and 
ultimately spread the message 
of resistance in the Black Lives 
Matter movement. Since then, 
videos have become incredibly 
significant 
in 
documenting 

unjust beatings against Black 

male civilians (i.e. Eric Garner, 
Alton Sterling and Philando 
Castile). And yet even when 
a situation involving a man 
or woman being beaten is 
visually 
encapsulated 
and 

draws sympathy, a “but-what-
if-this-happened” 
rhetoric 

erupts online. The videos each 
share similar undertones for 
how authority can mistreat a 
victim. 

Despite 
how 
cellphone 

videos can bring important 
awareness to a rarely discussed 
issue, there’s something very 
problematic 
and 
somewhat 

counterproductive about the 
act. Other than not telling the 
fully story behind what is being, 
the passive act of capturing 
and posting videos of injustice 
reinforces bystander culture. 
The camera has the power 
to illustrate a misdemeanor, 
but what about the person 
capturing the event? Or the 
other people nearby witnessing 
the incident? Shouldn’t they be 

doing something? The most 
plausible theory to explain 
this passivity is because using 
a camera phone is easier and 
much safer than attempting to 
defuse the situation yourself. 
In some cases, recording for 
evidence can make a huge 
difference in how we perceive 
issues like race and criminal 
justice. But even when someone 
films an innocent man selling 
cigarettes is choked to death 
on the sidewalk, there’s still a 
probability that there won’t be 
justice for the victim.

Viral videos of injustice 

might also not be the most 
helpful tool in giving full 
context 
of 
what 
they’re 

capturing. In fact, whatever 
incident 
is 
being 
depicted 

can have drastically different 
effects on viewers, depending 
on the angle or quality of 
the camera. When we watch 
these 
videos 
online, 
they 

automatically prime to us side 
with either the authority or 
the victim, depending on our 
implicit biases. Do we side 
with the victim because we 
feel compassion for someone 
who is being hurt physically 
and emotionally? Or do we side 
with the authority because we 
hate it when a person refuses 
to respect and listen to them?

My guess is that the blame 

should lie not with the victim 
or the authority, but the power 
structures that are responsible 
for creating such a incident, 
deliberate or not. Perhaps it isn’t 
the man on the United Airlines 
we should be blaming, or even 
the security guards who carried 
out this horrifying act — what 
they did was nevertheless awful 
and should not have been as 
violent as it ended up being. 
Rather, it is the incompetence of 
United Airlines that deserves the 
most accountability. Their first 
mistake was overbooking the 
flight, but it was the company’s 
negligence of this situation and 
their mistreatment of forcibly 
removing this passenger. United 
CEO Oscar Munoz has released 
a statement, apologizing to the 
passenger and the online but 
the damage is already done. The 
repercussions will live forever 
on tape. 

SAM 

ROSENBERG

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

‘Yeezus’ & the Bauhaus

Reflecting on industrial art and how it attests to Kanye’s artistry

When 
you 
think 
of 

Architecture, with a capital A, 
you might consider European 
cathedrals, 
gothic 
college 

campuses and maybe some all-
glass building with an all-white 
interior. 
So 
many 
Tumblr-

esque corners of the internet 
are cluttered with images of 
supremely tasteful homes and 
buildings, but almost none are 
of educational value. They just 
seem like nice spaces to be in, 
but it’s hard to understand why. 
Like music, you just know when 
you feel it.

I 
took 
an 
Architecture 

class last winter to try and 
understand 
how 
a 
space 

can impose itself on us, and 
perhaps vice-versa. Why do 
we make monuments? How do 
cities construct an identity? 
Can somewhere really be an 
empirically proven depressant, 
and how do you “fix” such a 

place?

I had most of my questions 

answered on a field trip to 
Lafayette Park: a legendary 
neighborhood 
in 
downtown 

Detroit, 
designed 
entirely 

German architect Mies Van der 
Rohe. Those who know me best 
know about my lifelong Kanye 
West fandom, so of course, 
an undertone of my field trip 
experience was in effort to 
understand West’s Yeezus-era 
obsession 
with 
mid-century 

modern architecture.

This 
is 
well-documented 

in many of West’s interviews 
and hidden easter eggs, and if 
you look in the right places, a 
strong argument could be made 
for considering Yeezus to be a 
legitimate “Bauhaus Album”. 
Specifically, 
while 
touring, 

I couldn’t help but think of 
an interview he did with Jon 
Caramanica of the New York 
Times, where he went as far as 
to cite a Le Corbusier lamp as a 
crucial “inspiration” for Yeezus.

For all of his efforts at 

building one of the greatest 
decade-spanning runs in music 
history, there’s no doubt that 
the Kanye West Experience 
has always been about more 
than the music. There is neither 
focal point nor distraction: 
Everything ranging from the 
brash interviews to the designer 
album covers contributes to a 
career-spanning performance 

art piece.

Even before the barrel of the 

media followed his every move, 
Kanye’s 
relentless 
personal 

development has always had 
architectural 
undertones. 

Before he was a Kardashian, he 
was a clumsy college dropout, 
packaging 
chipmunk-soul 

in Beaux-Arts frames. Late 
Registration shows his now-
iconic bear mascot peeking 
out from the doors of a stone 
cathedral; it should have been 
no surprise when he performed 
select tracks from the album 
with a full orchestra at Abbey 
Road Studios.

The Glow In The Dark 

Tour seemed to hyperextend 
Takashi Murakami’s vision of 
“Superflat” into a synesthetic 
cannon. A film he directed for 
Cruel Summer was projected on 
seven screens, superimposed 
on a pyramid-shaped pavilion 
designed by Dutch architect 
Rem Koolhaas. Every Kanye 
West album is an extension 
of a school of thought that 
transcends the realm of music.

Where 
Kanye 
travels 
to 

and creates his music is, in my 
opinion, the greatest indication 
of the space he intends for 
his music to occupy. He took 
a sabbatical in Rome before 
creating My Beautiful Dark 
Twisted Fantasy, dabbled in 
Japan during the Graduation 
era and made The Life of Pablo 
in Calabasas. It shows.

Yeezus, on the other hand, 

was recorded in-between a 
notoriously stark Manhattan 
loft, and an apartment in 
Paris’ 
16th 
Arrondissement. 

Now imagine Rick Rubin, and 
his beard, in either of those 
settings. Nice.

Like 
all 
Kanye 
albums, 

Yeezus is no exception in being 
a product of its environment. 
The relationship is sometimes 
hilariously direct; in the same 
interview with Caramanica, 
West revealed that he recorded 
in the living room of his Paris 
loft — which had “the worst 
acoustics possible” — and thus 
the songs “had to be super 
simple, because if you turned 
up some complicated sound 
and a track with too much bass, 
it’s not going to work in that 
space.” This is, by definition, 
engineering music for the space 
you intend for it to occupy.

The Le Corbusier citation 

for Yeezus is most interesting 
because it’s his most explicit 
architectural 
reference 
yet, 

and I find it to be worth 
considerable investigation in 
linking Yeezus to one of the 
most influential architectural 
movements and schools of all 
time: The Bauhaus.

I 
remember 
back 
when 

Yeezus first dropped, and the 
“no-album-cover” album cover 
felt like a bit of a like a lazy cop-
out. The fact that “On Sight” 
kicked the door in with a digital 
buzzsaw didn’t help; visual 
and sonic first impressions felt 
intentionally rugged.

Yet, the laziest criticism of 

post-MBDTF 
‘Ye 
capitalizes 

on these sorts of low-hanging 
fruit, spraying nonsense about 
his alleged “sloppiness” and 
“decline” since creating one of 
the most universally likeable 

albums of the century. While 
popular 
opinion 
remains 

that Kanye West is first and 
foremost an “asshole”, and 
musician second, holding and 
listening to Yeezus today in light 
of his architectural footprint 
seems to communicate a vision 
clear enough to remove all 
doubt regarding his multimedia 
genius. Where The Life of Pablo 
is more a product of 1950s Los 
Angeles “Googie” architecture, 
Yeezus is as cold and balanced 
as a Bauhaus product in every 
sense.

—

The core tenet of Bauhaus 

industrial design is structural 
transparency; clarity is the 
ultimate sophistication.

As we all know, the now-

infamous 
physical 
copies 

of Yeezus are designed as 
functionalist CD cases. No 
bells and whistles; the function 
is simply to house the disc. 
While touring a specific unit 

in Lafayette Park, I remember 
taking note a of a sink that was 
particularly helpful in making 
this connection.

Where most sinks contain 

features 
like 
cabinets 
and 

cupboards 
to 
abstract 
the 

underlying plumbing, this sink 
hid nothing. The frame of the 
sink was only inches deep (as 
little as necessary to funnel 
the water), with two iron pegs 
as support. The infrastructure 
set in place for plumbing was 
also completely visible — no 
ornamentation. 
One 
could 

easily identify weight-bearing 
components of the sink, and 
follow the path of the water 
from start to finish. While a CD 
case isn’t nearly as dynamic as 
a sink with moving parts, the 
design philosophy remains the 
same.

Aside from Kanye himself, 

the first names that come 
to mind when I think of the 
Yeezus era are Rick Rubin and 
Virgil Abloh — Kanye’s creative 
director. Virgil has a masters 
degree in Architecture from the 
Illinois Institute of Technology 
in 
Chicago, 
where 
Mies 

himself has actually designed 
the curriculum (it should be 
noted that West has also been 
documented Googling Mies in 
Paris around the same time).

While I had the privilege of 

SHAYAN SHAFII

Daily Arts Writer

visiting Virgil’s “Off-White” 
store 
in 
Hong 
Kong 
two 

summers ago, an employee 
spoke to me about how Virgil 
himself participated in the 
design process for the tropical 
storefront. There is no doubt 
that he, as a seasoned architect 
educated to Mies’ liking, had a 
hand in the creative direction 
of Yeezus.

Sonically, the album draws 

from Rick Rubin’s minimalist 
zen in addition to the sparse 
spaces that birthed it. Billing 
himself as more of a “reducer” 
than “producer,” Rubin was 
largely responsible for fleshing 
out the entire album over 
the course of a week. I still 
remember 
running 
through 

My Beautiful Dark Twisted 
Fantasy all day in anticipation 
of my first listen through 
Yeezus, and in hindsight, this 
was terrible preparation to 
hear an album made by a guy 
who reinvents himself twice a 
year. Where Twisted Fantasy 
is architecturally equivalent to 
something like the classically 
ornate 
Pantheon, 
Rubin 

stripped Yeezus down to a 
carbon-fiber skeleton.

The end of “I’m In It”, for 

example, has a certain space 
and volume about it that lurches 
and collapses in on itself; the 
high-hats don’t layer so much 
as they wait for one another, 
spacing themselves out and 
alternating between left and 
right 
channels. 
Somewhere 

in the middle, Kanye remains 
in focus, but rapping as if his 
words 
intermittently 
pass 

through a strobe light. The 
bass kicks up dust with every 
iteration. The song sounds like 
a hollowed-out sex factory.

 “I Am A God” kicks off with 

an echo that bounces around 
some freezing abyss. Kanye’s 
voice is warped and permuted 

into variations of itself, flying 
in from all directions. Even on 
the 100th listen you struggle to 
predict where he comes from.

The most venomous track 

on the album, “New Slaves”, 
is driven by a single synth 

melody; it feels as hollow as 
the loft it was written in, and 
as cold as the stone it originally 
vibrated on. Again, Kanye’s 
voice is an industrial hammer-
blow between keystrokes. His 
panting on “Black Skinhead” 
seems to drip sweat on the 
barking synths that open the 
track. Each and every song 
is 
arranged 
with 
enough 

elements for you to count on 

one hand, but together they 
form soundscapes built on the 
Bauhaus design language.

In the same way that an 

architect 
places 
walls 
and 

columns to create a structure 
that 
you 
can 
navigate 

experientially, 
Yeezus 
sees 

Kanye narrow in on specific 
sonic elements like a synth or 
808, and guide them through 
various crevices of a single 
track. The sparse layers create 
spaces in songs that don’t 
exist 
elsewhere 
in 
Kanye’s 

discography; for the first time, 
Kanye 
ditches 
church 
and 

orchestra rehearsal to play with 
fire in an industrial complex. 
If 
his 
traditionally 
lush 

instrumentation 
suffocates 

you through raw enumeration 
(think: how many people must 
have been in that “Ultralight 
Beam” choir?), Yeezus throws 
you through a meatgrinder in 
an empty warehouse.

The whole album reminds 

me of one of Mies’ most 
famous sketches — a piece 
titled “Concert Hall” — where 
he draws 2D planes on an 
image of an empty airplane 
factory. The tessellation of 
beams and columns creates a 
certain elegance possible only 
through 
Bauhaus 
structural 

transparency; yet, the space 
between the columns creates 
a cold, airless vacuum. This 
is the space that Yeezus — the 
Bauhaus album — occupies.

It was assembled with the 

sophistication of mid-century 
modern 
industrialism 
and 

architecture, 
yet 
executed 

with the cold ruthlessness of a 
Black man denied entry to the 
bourgeoisie world of fashion. In 
one motion, he creates a project 
to show that he can “do it too”, 
but won’t let you in unless you 
cut the red tape first.

The core tenet 

of Bauhaus 

industrial design 

is structural 
transparency; 

clarity is 

the ultimate 
sophistication

Where Kanye 
travels to and 

creates his music 
is, in my opinion, 

the greatest 

indication of the 
space he intends 
for his music to 

occupy

In the same way 
that an architect 
places walls and 
columns to create 
a structure that 
you can navigate 

experientially, 
‘Yeezus’ sees 

Kanye narrow in 
on specific sonic 
elements like a 
synth or 808

