Articles

Lauren Halsey - Emajendat

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Writing about this show is a little like writing about hip-hop, a cultural movement that prides itself on its nature of being indefinable. Or, as Greg Tate said in his 1996 spoken word performance, What is Hip-hop: “Hip-hop currently resides beneath the noise … You know hip-hop when you see it, you may not see hip-hop before it seizes you. Hip-hop is not what it is today but what it could be tomorrow … Arguing with hip-hop about the nature of hip-hop is like arguing with water about the nature of wetness … Hip-hop flows right through ya … Hip-hop is black Prozac.”

Halsey has created a multicolour, candyfloss, shout-out vision of a universe, a Gesamtkunstwerk that is maximalist yet hyper-specific, a meta-commentary on what it is to be part of something, to have a past and a future, to believe and to thrive, to make a mark. I leave the show upbeat and a little confused, in all the right ways.