For the Record: Designing Realities examined the politics of production design in popular music videos during the Nederlands Film Festival.

This event explored design tactics for collective music experiences during the pandemic and beyond, in collaboration with Rewire festival.

This edition of For the Record looked into the interconnectivity of digital subcultures through the lens of K-pop and K-drama fandoms.

For the Record: Performing Gender examined gender roles and feminist positions in popular music videos.

This event examined and discussed the music video Apeshit by The Carters, also known as Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

Rendering Climate examined how popular music videos take on urgent environmental issues, and discussed local and global imaginaries and visual communication strategies within artistic practice, activism and journalism.

For the Record: Staging Realities examined the role of set and stage design in music videos and live events. In collaboration with IFFR.

Part of the Porto Design Biennale 2021, For the Record: The Politics of Design in Music Video was a two-day programme of lectures and workshops on 23 and 24 July in Maus Hábitos and Casa da Arquitectura.

Part of the Porto Design Biennale 2021, For the Record: The Politics of Design in Music Video was a two-day programme of lectures and workshops on 23 and 24 July in Maus Hábitos and Casa da Arquitectura.

This online event looked at how local realities and changing notions of public space are represented in music videos.

Dan Hassler-Forest reflects on worldbuilding strategies in music videos of Taylor Swift and Janelle Monáe.

This short vox pop explores the historic and contemporary significance of these movements in West African popular music from the grassroots perspective of a group of creatives based in Lagos.

In this essay, Sary Zananiri unpacks the city of Jerusalem as subject of inspiration for artists, writers and musicians, well beyond the confines of Historical Palestine, and how the two conflicting Jerusalems, both heavenly and earthly, relate to one another.

Deep Decisions? investigates deepfake technology in music videos. A research project by KM Works.

Eliza Steinbock examines style, gestures and queer iconicity in the videos of Madonna, Prince and recent music videos.

In this essay, Jason King reflects on Drake’s promotion of his music through video virality at a time of global contagion, reaffirming problematic class distinctions and the tension between the Black indoors and outdoors in the midst of an unprecedented health crisis and worldwide economic instability.

In this essay, Liselotte Doeswijk discusses a number of underexposed or underestimated – and often lost – experiments from Dutch television history.

An essay by Jordi Viader Guerrero on Tik Tok and the politics of scrolling.

An essay by Léa-Catherine Szacka on how MTV infiltrated the domestic space, disrupting programming and the traditional family routine.

Essay by Luisa Sol on American suburbia in 1980s music videos of among others James Brown, the Pet Shop Boys and Bruce Springsteen.

Momtaza Mehri discusses the participation of young Eastern African women in K-pop culture, and how it reveals the interconnectedness of digital subcultures from the mid-2000s to now, on the basis of iconic K-pop videos.

Guus Beumer scrutinizes Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl Halftime Show and detects a new role for the audience, with far-reaching consequences for design disciplines.

The screen might seem self-evident, but it is not. Essay on the geneaologies of the screen.

Introduction to Selling Bricks, a research project by Bartlebooth. Selling Bricks examines the differences between the built environment in the northern and southern peripheries of Europe, through the Spanish trap scene and the Dutch nedertrap as case studies, represented by urban video clips.

In The Eleventh Island, Janilda Bartolomeu describes how the medium of video enabled her to uncover hidden Cape Verdean histories, thanks to its ability to switch the “lenses” through which we view society. 

Introduction to "Self-Splintering Music Videos" by Albert Figurt.

This selection of K-Pop music videos between 1999-2021 by Yo-E Ryou.

Federica Notari explores the subversive music – and mobility – of Italian pop icon Raffaella Carrà.

The pop artist Dorian Electra employs a maximalist approach toward sound, set, and costume design to challenge the masculinities of our online-offline world. In a performance that is drag and more, the endless complexities of identity are unfurled.

Video essay and playlist on Nigerian music. From Fela Kuti's 'Ololufe Mi' to recent releases of Burna Boy. By Fope Ojo.

Music videos aren't what they used to be. Contemporary artists and their collaborating directors are breaking down barriers and reaching fans in exciting and experimental ways. Despite relatively low return on investment, the format continues to be crucial for the development of an artist's identity.

Having an on-screen crush can be complicated. Even more so if that crush's actions conjure a long line of problematic appropriations of lesbianism. With Arianna Grande as a starting point, Rosanna Mclaughlin dives into the history of the entertainment industry's exploitation of lesbian sexuality.

Coachella stands as one of the world's most well known and well-attended music festivals, but headlining does not mean all that it used to. In addition to live performances, artists are putting out prolonged, digitally distributed visual accompaniments to reach their audience beyond the span of two weekends in the Coachella Valley.

The artist is on the stage, but who is behind the stage itself? Since the mid-90s the entertainment architecture firm Stufish has maintained a design practice shrowded in mortality, reaching for an afterlife through audience memory. In this article, employees at Stufish give a glimpse into the complex arrangement and assemblage involved in staging for Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

The visual and the auditory bleed into each other beyond the music video. This exhibition at Kunsthal Rotterdam presented works of fine art that are inextricably tied to musical inspirations. A flourishing, artistic dialectic presented in unexpected ways.

Musical artists operate in a paradigm that affords them an audience and platforms, which they can use to influence the tides of social change. Striking the balance between activism and artistry can be a nearly impossible task. When stretched too far, burn-out can cause both to fall by the wayside.

Can we have this dance, virtually? Under restrictions put in place due to the COVID-19 outbreak, dancers have had to find new means and spaces for practising and learning together. In an ad hoc manner, a kitchen is morphed into a (cramped) ballroom.

The history of art is fraught with instances of erasure. What is not present, or what is pushed to the background, says as much as what is in focus. With their music video for "APESHIT", Beyoncé and Jay-Z take over the Louvre and draw our attention to what we should have seen all along.

Presenting signifiers of dysphoria and disassociation, Ariana Grande's video for "No Tears Left to Cry" prompts a dive into Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. What are the ways difference is sought out in a time when nothing seems to be here? How might these desires for something else be coded within whiteness and projected upon trans* subjectivities?

In Beyoncé and Jay-Z's artistic occupation of the Louvre for "APESHIT", they challenge the history presented by the museum and the art world writ large. Moving, dancing in close proximity to the colonial, they open up space for knowledge generation and new potentialities. The art museum serves as a point of contact between the material and social.

Breaking down the medium into its constituent parts, Carol Vernallis sets the music video apart from, but still in relation to, other similar mediums of artistic expression. Rather than treating the music video as subordinate to the song, Vernallis' approach draws out the elements that are unique to the platform and amplifies their socio-cultural and economic implications.

A response to a pandemic that asks for social isolation, virtual avenues to clubbing attempt to create a safe space for song, dance, and hanging out. But these international, online gatherings are not without their complications. Should these Zoom parties continue to rage past the pandemic, the organisers will need to come to grips with issues of data insecurity and hate speech.

Restricted to their homes, unable to host large on-set production teams, artists are devising new ways of shooting music videos during a pandemic. With a low-budget aesthetic or an increased focus on post-production, pandemic-proof music videos show that artistry does not stop even under the most isolating of circumstances.

Kahlil Joseph has worked as a director of visual accompaniments to music by artists such as Arcade Fire, Beyonce, Flying Lotus, FKA Twigs and Sampha. Through his collaborations, he creates a framing that gets to the heart of Black life. This article by Hilton Als looks at two of his earlier works and elaborates upon the emotions conjured up by his storytelling.

Rihanna's Unapologetic presents the listener with a pop album that, rather than swelling toward a break through, traverses the mild hills and valleys of a non-place saturated with melancholy. As Robin James explicates, how stars are expected to respond to and overcome grief is deeply racialised and gendered. Instead of pushing for a performed resilience, might there be something to be said for staying with that which oppresses?

From "Formation" to "Just Dance", director and producer Melinda Matsoukas' portfolio is nothing short of prolific. But what sets her apart is an unmatched ability to create works that exude emotion. Normally behind the scenes, this interview brings Matsoukas front and centre.

MTV made the music video a (brief) fascination of media studies. In the time since the channel's launch, this initial enthusiasm has faded. In Music Video after MTV, Korsgaard brings a scholarly lens to the academically neglected medium. A mountain of untouched history means there is much to be analysed.

An inherently visual medium, the music video is always already implicated in the politics of representation. What is there to be read in the music video regarding feminism and feminist theory? Railton and Watson ask this very question and, through a set of case studies, seeks to reveal possible answers.

The music video is a melange of high and low culture, living before, in, and beyond the contemporary. As a medium, it can be a space for the manifestation of the not-yet or a reaffirmation of the established order. Recognising the complexity of the music video as a mode of cultural expression, this collection takes an appropriately multi-sided approach.

The task given to designers of nightclub venues is to create a space that exists outside the everyday. This exhibition at Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein explored the history and contemporary state of nightclub design. Moving from the space behind the screen to that in front of it, how might design allow for participation in alternative realities?

Ana DuVerney and Jay-Z present us with a future of The United States that is radically different from its past. When all seems lost, imagining and visualising what can be helps to stay away feelings of political apathy and misanthropy.

Escaping a civil war, forced into refugee status, M.I.A. rose to become one of the most influential and misunderstood pop stars of her generation. Referencing the documentary "Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.", Momtaza Mehri details the challenges and contradictions that comprise M.I.A.'s story.

Problematising the 'problematic' and working beyond the surface of representation, how might the underlying issues of race be brought into public discourse? A strategy focused on being 'woke' avoids an interrogation of structures that give rise to and perpetuate oppression. Artists like Noname are moving beyond optics into realms of study and structural injustice. 

Television has been crucial for the proliferation of the music video. This exhibition at Museo Jumex in Mexico City presented an artistic exploration of the medium.

Dance music, traditionally reliant on spaces of congregation, would seem to be ill suited for an increasingly digital world. However, artists and collectives are finding ways to utilise the affordances of an online environment for their ends. Creating worlds, these virtual pioneers are making a space for dance music across digital networks.

Brother Portrait's video for "seeview/rearview" is a multilayered tableaux of Black British experience. Roots and a London-based upbringing merge to create a space requiring rediscovery and reconciliation in the creation of a self. At the same time, the individual and social mix to form a sense of history that affords difference and resonance.

Simulating the spatial, a YouTube channel under the name "Cecil Robert" adds another level of affectual weight to beloved tracks. Rather than being spoonfed a high-quality stream of hand-picked songs, the audience of Robert's channel can re-experience a lack of control and fidelity that seems to have faded in today's Spotify world order. In many cases, the results are a shock to the emotions.

With a reflection upon the architectural history of performance spaces used in popular music, Kronenburg investigates the role of the spatial in musical performance. From the improvised to the thoroughly planned, stage design has become an industry in its own right. With many hands involved in the process of conceptualisation, production and implementation, stages present all the complexities of traditional architecture and more.

Protests carried out over virtual platforms can have material effects. Then-President Donald Trump expected to find a sell-out crowd when he arrived for a campaign rally in June of 2020. Instead, over two-thirds of the venue's booked seats remained mute and empty.

What are the ways in which the music video reflects and shapes our lives? Carol Vernallis traces the dialectic between lived reality and artistic expression via the music video. Paying equal attention to the visual and auditory opens up a web of relationality that reveals as much about us as it does the artist.

In the second edition of their Video Vortex series, the Institute of Network Cultures expands its investigation into online video and digital distribution platforms. Sourcing contributions from across disciplines (including an article by For The Record research fellow Albert Figurt), Video Vortex Reader II presents a multifaceted study of the state and implications of online video beyond YouTube.

Staging an arrest, adopting and amplifying a catchphrase, and dawning the outrageous are some of the ways Rap artists are finding inroads to relevance. Becoming a meme can be an immensely powerful tool for online marketing. Here are some of the artists that do it the most.

Will popular video games such as Roblox and Fortnight become two of the hottest music venues on the planet? Rethinking live performances for a (post)pandemic future, video games give artists the ability to reach fans regardless of distance. In the interactive, virtual environment of the video game possibilities await to be explored, together.