Is Diddy’s New Black News Network a Ripoff of Artist Kahlil Joseph’s Acclaimed Venice Biennale Project? Some Critics Think So

Music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs surprised fans over the weekend
by announcing the launch of a new platform, “Black News,” to report
current events from the perspective of the black community.

This might be welcome news to many, but for some, it brought
about an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. Artist, filmmaker,
and music video director Kahlil Joseph, creative director of Los
Angeles’s Underground Museum, presented
a strikingly similar concept at the 2019 Venice Biennale with his
video, BLKNWS.

And it didn’t take long for many in the cultural
community—including Moonlight and If Beale Street Could
Talk director Barry Jenkins—to point that
out.

Diddy introduced his latest endeavor in an Instagram video: “I always wanted to
develop a platform to report the news from our perspective, from
our lens, from our people—so I decided to launch ‘Black News,’” he
said.

The framing echoes the thinking behind Joseph’s project,
which Artnet News
editor-in-chief Andrew Goldstein described as “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.”

Joseph has declined to comment on the similarity, but his fans
and colleagues haven’t been so circumspect. While no one person
could make an exclusive claim to such a big idea, some have pointed
out that it is unlikely that Diddy was unaware of Joseph’s work,
and expressed disappointment that the precedent went
unacknowledged.

“At first I was SURPRISED then delighted that Kahlil and Diddy
came together but then I checked and… I’m sorry but this ain’t
right,” Barry Jenkins wrote on Twitter. “It
illustrates how one can collect art without SEEING it. Bcuz how can
Kerry James Marshall be on your wall but u not know of Kahlil
Joseph?”

It would be easy to assume that Combs had teamed up with Joseph
to bring BLKNWS to a wider audience. The musician is
also a high-profile art collector who has been known to make the rounds at Art
Basel Miami Beach with art advisor Maria
Brito—she helped him pull the trigger on his $21.1 million purchase
of Marshall’s Past
Times (1997) at Sotheby’s in 2018.

And even if Combs were not so embedded in the visual arts,
Joseph has close ties to the music industry, having directed music
videos for the likes of Kendrick Lamar and FKA Twigs. His most
high-profile project, creating the visual album for Beyoncé’s
Lemonade, was nominated for an Emmy.

Since then, BLKNWS has appeared at David
Zwirner in New York, as part of an exhibition of Joseph’s late
brother, painter, curator, and Underground Museum founder Noah
Davis. It was screened at Utah’s Sundance Film Festival in
January before a limited release at independent cinemas across the
country. The piece was also scheduled to be on view at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music and Brooklyn’s Weeksville Heritage Center, an
event that was cancelled due to the global health crisis.

Asked about the controversy, curator Helen Molesworth, who
appeared on a mock news segment in BLKNWS, told Artnet
News: “Unfortunately, I do think that this is an example of
plagiarism. Joseph’s BLKNWS has had wide and heterogenous
exposure, from screenings at the Underground Museum to the Venice
Biennale, from being workshopped at the Cantor Arts Center at
Stanford to its existence in the lobby of the Eaton Hotel in
Washington, DC. It’s been circulated widely among Hollywood folks
and many music industry people own copies of it. So I find it hard
to believe, to Barry Jenkins’s point, that anyone, by which I mean
Diddy, who owns a Kerry James Marshall and professes to be all
about the culture, isn’t aware of what the director of
Lemonade is up to. But the real question for me is why did
he continue with it even after he was explicitly informed? What
version of the culture is that?”

Joseph’s project is due to get another showing at the
now-postponed “Made in LA 2020: a
version” biennial, with the Hammer Museum in Los
Angeles partnering with the Los Angeles Nomadic
Division to present the artwork at black-owned businesses and
other sites across the city. LAND and the Hammer did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.

Combs is launching his version of “Black News” on REVOLT TV, the
music cable network he started in 2003. The first episode, featuring special guests
Nick Cannon, Jhene Aiko, Styles P, Angela Yee, and Deepak Chopra,
debuted Sunday night on REVOLT TV’s YouTube
channel and offers tips on how to use food and herbs to
boost immunity and enhance wellness. According to REVOLT, the
concept was inspired by a town hall held on REVOLT about the impact
of coronavirus on Black America. (Separately, Black News Channel, a
broadcast television news channel headquartered in
Tallahassee, debuted on February 10 during Black History
Month.)

Diddy could not be reached, and REVOLT TV did not immediately
respond to a request for comment.

The feedback to Diddy’s project has been mixed, to say the
least. “It’s a tender time and while I appreciate @Diddy launching
a news beat directed towards black issues, there is already a
project title[d] BLKNWS and it’s authored by a
black artist. Disappointed in his team for this oversight,” said
independent curator Kimberley Drew on Twitter. “We need a
voice right now, but we cannot overwrite the work of our
peers.”

“It’s blatant plagiarism,” added Tunisian writer and curator
Myriam Ben Salah on Twitter. “This is a rip-off of Kahlil Joseph’s
#BLKNWS.”

The post Is Diddy’s New Black News Network a Ripoff of
Artist Kahlil Joseph’s Acclaimed Venice Biennale Project? Some
Critics Think So appeared first on artnet News.