An innovative, algorithm-driven catalog detailing the work of media artist Tony Cokes. 

“I like it when my work […] appears simple so that it can be complex in another way.” — Tony Cokes

For over three decades, the media artist Tony Cokes has made work that scrutinizes the ideology and affective politics of media and pop culture. Based on a fundamental critique of the representation and visual commodification of African-American communities in film, television, commercials, and music videos, Cokes has developed a singular form of video essay that radically rejects representational imagery. He employs strategies of appropriation that are widely used in music and DJ culture. In a kind of sampling and remixing, the artist arranges material sourced from film and pop music, as well as journalistic and philosophical writings and fragments from social media, to fashion new narratives. 

Let Yourself Be Free is released in conjunction with Cokes’s solo exhibition at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein. In the exhibition, he engages works from the collection in dialogue. The principle of sampling and mixing also underlies this catalog. A programmed algorithm makes each copy a singular specimen: the interface in the printing process continually varies images that document Cokes’s video essays at different points in time. With essays by Jordan Carter and Christoph Cox and an extensive interview with the artist by Letizia Ragaglia.