I don’t remember
2016 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
Yung Jake
I don’t remember is a video by Yung Jake that combines his passion for both music and the visual arts. As per several of his works the video borrows from the vernacular of rap and relies on the aesthetic and stylistic qualities of music videos. A humorous interpretation of the rap and hip hop genres, the video combines scenes from urban settings and snapshots of a party as the artist raps in a drowsy monotone about having forgotten the wild night. The video is presented through a monitor embedded inside of a powder coated steel frame with visible headphones and an extension cord. This relates to a larger body of works by the artist were he presents video combined with colorful hardware (pink and/or yellow cables, headphones, and metal frames) chosen for its formal and sculptural qualities.
Yung Jake is a visual artist and YouTube rapper based in Los Angeles whose work fuses new media, music, and art. Deeply rooted in a millennial zero, his practice incorporates the vernaculars of social media, internet and rap culture, and combines them through a playful use—or misuse—of digital technology. Yung Jake came to prominence after releasing the music video Datamosh in 2011, a work where the artist deliberately applied glitches and pixelation to give the footage a hallucinogenic, dream-like effect. A year later he released the video E.m-bed.de/d, which somehow takes over the viewer’s browser to deliver a music video through an elaborate sequence of transitions between pop-ups that open, close, expand and flicker. Although several of his works are developed entirely for the internet, some pieces by Yung Jake are sculptural or designed to hang on a wall. In a recent series of sculptures, the artist combines prints of popular video-game and cartoon characters with scrap metal, spray paint, stickers, tape, ink, monitors and handwritten text. Another popular body of work is comprised by portraits of celebrities—such as Kim Kardashian, David Bowie, Anthony Bourdain and many others—made entirely out of emojis. Beyond their overt relationship to the hustle and bustle of social media, in the words of the artist: “when things are iconic/famous it’s safe to assume most people have a relationship with that thing so it fills an object with energy in a way.”
