THE GAMES WE PLAY is a project run by the edinburgh college of art during the shop from 13th to 16th december 2011. Every student was allocated a playing card with which he was supposed to create a piece of work - I got the 7 of diamonds. Not having any sufficient associations with that card I opened page 7 of the book closest to my desk which appeared to be JAY-Zs Decoded. The pages, in my eyes, most striking line reads:
Id spend free time reading the dictionary, building my vocabulary for battles.
My actual contribution to the project is the above video. Listening to the clean version of one of JAY-Zs best songs and a milestone in the history of rap and hip hop 99 Problems (brilliant music video by Mark Romanek; music produced by the great Rick Rubin) on YouTube, I found my self amazed by how illogical the censorship of especially this song was. Seeing JAY-Z as a young kid gradually adopting a more elaborate vocab on the one hand, this censorship takes the essence of one of his greatest hits within one move.
The video displays all 36 censored cutouts in their chronological order for three times.
