Local Music Vid Wins Cannes Award For Theft and Racism

So it’s local flavor time.

This here is the music vid for a song called Control by Spoek Mathambo and it’s been shot and directed by local photographers Pieter Hugo and Michael Cleary.

The story goes that Piet was rocking his way through some local albums when he was suddenly confronted with a familiar image gracing the cover of Spoek’s Mshiniwam album – one of his own.

This one

Now, ol’ Piet was mildly peeved that the Spoekster had pilfered his work in the pursuit of hip-hop stardom, and confronted the musician, presumably armed with a length of hard rubber. A short while later, Piet left, somehow having agreed to shoot and direct Spoek’s next music video, which just goes to show that you should never try negotiating with a man who takes racism this seriously.

So the video is super allegorical, as one might expect form a photographer who made his name shooting men hugging hyenas and painted old people with horns (just Google it). Black guy dressed in white. Black kids dusted white. Black kids dusted white paint black guy dressed in white black. Then beat him with shamboks. Because that’s art.

The video ended up pulling a Young Director’s Award at Cannes.

The whole deal does beg the question, however, as to whether ol’ Spoek asked Joy Division’s permission to use their song…