Nesby Philips is doing some pretty good things: can you tell us a little more about how you got to know him?<\/strong><\/p>\nNesby Phips is someone I listened to before going out there which was cool as his manager Matthew Moses who met in LA and introduced us to Kadhja Bonet and him and made sure it all went smoothly. Phips is an interesting character and is a good person to meet if you want to break any preconceptions about rappers. He\u2019s a Jet Life rapper alongside Currensy and Young Roddy, we where made to feel very welcome from being given tours of the hood and places places he grew up to being invited to car shows to being shown good places to eat in the French Quarter. The\u00a0rap scene there is very real without it having to be too violent and Philips seems to sit somewhere between making rap that\u2019s influenced by a tough neighbourhood of New Orleans, art, and the deep jazz influences of New Orleans in particular the free flow stream of conscious way of writing lyrics he outlines in the film.<\/p>\n
When we filmed Bang Bang we where out in Hollygrove late at night. Many of the\u00a0houses are still derelict after Hurricane Katrina and have strange markings on the walls outside detailing how many bodies where found in the houses. The tracks about police shootings in New Orleans and featured a young actor lying in a pool of blood having being shot and a cop with his foot on Philip\u2019s neck. Loads of people in the neighbourhood where involved in setting up the shoot and when we finally plugged in the lights to the generator they didn\u2019t turn on. The whole shoot was about to be cancelled until a local who was blind drunk came and found his way into the next doors electricity supply powering the shoot. Soon after a woman drove past and casually asked us if the kid on the floor had been shot then drove off.<\/p>\n
Your previous work has been quite different (for the Chelsea Flower Show etc.), though I\u2019m sure you could draw out some wider parallels between your disparate pieces. How did Mystery Lights <\/em>compare as an artistic experience to some of your previous work and do you think it changed the direction in which you would like to move?<\/strong><\/p>\nThis project felt more complete than anything I\u2019ve done as it was a collaboration between me and three good friends Jack Layfeild, James Heaphy and Jesse Heath. That brings so much more to it than being a personal project. The art work was created by our interactions together and with others on the trip, going out and meeting people and creating insights into America and it\u2019s people as a result. The main reason it does connect with my previous work though is that it plays with contrast, I always like to create contrast in things as the two contrasting opponents amplify each other in interesting ways. In the Chelsea Project it was the contrast of technology and nature. This time it was the cities and the landscapes, gangster rap contrasting with the empty desert, Elvis impersonators contrasting with footwork etc.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next for you\/what project\u2019s coming up?<\/strong><\/p>\nWe just had the launch night for the film, Nowhere at the Bussey Building and Copeland Gallery in Peckham. We screened the film in a cinema and had an audiovisual installation and bought DJ Taye over from Chicago for a footwork performance so it was like an extension of the film. I\u2019m going to focus on this as an on-going an art based performance event in 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We speak to the super-talented Olly Jennings about his road-trip collab with Converse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":61877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[305,9420],"tags":[7662],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Olly Jennings - Mystery Lights | Wonderland Magazine<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n