Yeah I read it as soon as I got interested in him. Its very dense. A lot of the stuff he says in it are riffs that he revisits in various ways in all the video interviews (there's a very good one I posted up thread with greg tate).
The alien story for example, he says that "better", more clearly, elsewhere (again, I linked to it above I think) but the way he talks about it in black death and then skips onto star wars right after, its very engaging.
The duchamp theory likewise is more clearly explicated elsewhere.
What he says about pollock is very very similar to what Gary panter says about pollock, in that pollock has this tragedy of not knowing who he was and why he was doing what he was doing, but panters spin is different to jafas, panter says pollock never got out of the orbit of picasso.
Like I said with jafas theory about German dub, I'm not sure I agree with it all, in this case, the way he has made black, the colour, the centre of everything and then grafted it onto race.
Like I mean, is it possible for a white person (or in fact any colour person) to be interested in blackness, as a colour, or conceptually, for reasons other than to do with race? I think it's possible.
But what's so good about him is how convincing he is, how convinced he is himself by own socratic style dialogue. I love it.
Ive actually got his big exhibition catalogue with me right now, from his serpentine exhibition. Lots of gems in it, I'll post a few bits in a bit.
But the most noticeable thing at the moment is literally how big and heavy it is. It's a 1000 page hardback photo book, with a load of essays, and it's so difficult to read, like holding it in your hands or on your lap. In fact I already totally broke it, it has come away from its spine. I can't help but feel that's the main thing he means with thd book. Literally breaking under itself.
www.frieze.com
