You never know what you’ll get if you throw two incredibly talented creatives in a room together to collab on an idea. With that many juices flowing, it could end in a beautiful mess or complete chaos.
Since we love a bit of experimentation, that’s exactly what we did. We got two creatives who work across entirely different mediums to collab on a project using their respective skills. The two artists up for the challenge were BVT, a beatboxer, rapper and R&B artist who uses music to proudly tell stories of queer love and POC experiences, and Jackson Farley, a visual artist whose work focuses on outmoded notions of masculinity.
They didn’t exactly have a brief to follow (other than to use a Galaxy Z Flip4 and Galaxy Z Fold4), which meant they had to depend on their imagination entirely. The final product is kooky, colourful, and on the weird and whacky side of things.
You can check out how they went about the process here:
Pretty incred, hey? Given that we were pretty blown away by their creation, we sat down with Bernie and Jackson to dive a little deeper into what drives them as artists and inspires them to create. Here’s what they had to say.
BVT
PEDESTRIAN.TV: What is the purpose of your art? What do you set out to achieve with your music?
BVT: To decolonise self, reclaim space and bring visibility to QPOC in the mainstream music industry.
What initially inspired you to start making music? Who are your main inspirations?
Hip Hop birthed me. And I’m so grateful to be a guest in this house. Firstly, to all the Black and POC people who paved the way before me, but also the heavy hitters that influenced me greatly — Missy Elliot, Left Eye (TLC), Rahzel, Timbaland, Eminem and the whole early 2000s hip hop/RnB era.
How did you go about writing your part for this collaboration? Can you tell us the process behind it?
A lot of what I do is on the fly. Then I dial back and finesse it. Using a loop station and being a beatboxer allows for that free range of play and refinement. When you’ve been doing something for more than half your life, you realise that anything you make in minutes is an ode to the time you’ve put into it. I was extremely sleep-deprived after driving back from Brisbane and arriving at 3am that morning. But honestly, it probably aided the process of making something strange and interesting.
It was great being able to use the Galaxy Z Flip4 to record voice memos and record quickly. I love the flip feature as it’s nostalgic and inspires me to remember things that were prominent in the roots of my childhood. It’s also a super convenient feature when propping it up and efficient for on-the-fly creating.
Can you describe what you created?
An intergalactic meeting of two very quirky and strange minds. A creative swirl of, “WTF is happening?” And, “Wow, this is cool.”
What was it like working alongside Jackson?
Loved it! 10/10 would do again. We both love to be efficient yet hone in on our creations. There’s so much room to play.
What did you enjoy most about this process?
The phone was fun to interact with, and I enjoyed finding a new experience with a collaborator I hadn’t considered working with before.
Jackson Farley
PEDESTRIAN.TV: What is the purpose of your art? What do you set out to achieve with your multidisciplinary practice?
For me, it’s always centred on storytelling. My ‘why’ is and has always been poking and prodding, making fun of seemingly impenetrable power structures and hierarchies.
Humour is always at the centre of concept, its ability to diffuse and disarm is so potent (and often art is a bit drab), so I always like to start with the punchline and work my way back. I like to insert my narrative within each work to point out the irony of the now to critique the ever-present notion of ‘genius’ within art.
Jackson: What initially inspired you to start making visual art? Who are your main inspirations?
I wish I had an incredible story about how I was born with a paintbrush in hand, smoking en Plein air ciggies. But to be completely honest, I think it’s cause I don’t deal with the heat very well, so liked to spend a lot of time drawing and doing general inside things.
Through routine, it became an obsession, and I started slowly chugging away along my art journey. I used to have book after book filled to the brim with drawings of cooked animals, swords and cooked animal sword things. It wasn’t until after high school that I thought about jetting off to art school.
Grayson Perry, Emily Hunt, Kara Walker, Vincent Namatjira, Martin Gross and Joan Ross are some of the artists that inspire me most.
How did you go about writing your part for this collaboration? Can you tell us the process behind it?
I’m usually shit at collaborating. So I was excited to dive in head first and surrender to the whole process. I came in with a little idea and was inspired by Bernie’s practice, and I was keen to explore this notion of beatboxing as performative battle. I also really wanted to break down ‘collaboration’ and what that might look like in a tangible space. I don’t have a green screen in my studio, so I was keen to do that. I approached the collaborative process through the same lens as improv with the response always being ‘yes’ to make it as free-flowing as possible.
The Galaxy Z Fold4 was everything during the process. In the same way that Bernie and I were collaborating, I really wanted to let tech dictate the process and decision-making. It was an easel, paintbrush and frame for the entire journey. It was used as for the initial sketches and all the recordings on the green screen. The final work was ultimately shown on the Galaxy Z Fold4 with its massive screen.
Can you describe what you created?
The work is a very serious critique of our internalised ideals of self (just kidding). It was a very fun and silly video work in the Bernie and Jacko collaborative universe where the formations are created out of our hands, shoes and my weird thumbs.
Bernie’s beatboxing monster (that she drew on the Galaxy Fold4 and then I created out of images and video from the green screen) comes down from space, and self-destructs full Dragon Ball Z style, while real Bernie and Jackson stomp around the universe completely oblivious to the fact that the beatboxing space monster is about to end everything forever.
