Hunger.

Steve McQueen
Representing Britain at the Venice Biennial

Quite recently Steve McQueen became the artist to know. He currently has a two page spread in the March issue of W Magazine and is poised to represent Britain at the Venice Biennial. Showing what, you ask? Well, he's not saying. Why? Because he might just be the coolest motherfucker on the planet.

McQueen, whose onslaught of recent accolades are based on a his First Feature film entitled Hunger, has certainly had a rather meaty career. He was an official war artist in Iraq in 2003 (the resulting work, Queen and Country is currently showing at the Barbican in London), he won both the Camera d’Or and an International Film Critics Federation Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and we're positive if we listen closely we'll find that he walks to the soundtrack of "Put On (for my city)" by Young Jeezy, Ft. Kanye (the song widely rumored to be Michael Phelps' warm up music during the Olympic Games... we'er just saying...).

See, Steve McQueen is a little bit Spike (he not only dropped out of the Director's famed Alma mater, Tisch School for the Arts in NYC, but he also appears in many of his own films) and a little bit Kanye, (the drumb beat of police batons in Hunger is so percise and rythmic it hints at the familiar sound of the African Drummer's base lines heard West's hit "Love Locked Down."-skip to approx 1:03 on the youtube link to hear the drum line). He sites Andy Warhol's films as some of his prominent influences and he might be the only artist alive who said he didn't "give a shit" about the currently failing art market when questioned by W writer Christopher Bagley. When asked about the shaky state of the art market McQueen says cooly,

"I don't give a shit. I don't care. If I was thinking about money when I make something I possibly wouldn't make it."

to read the rest of this article please pick up the March issue of W Magazines. Article pages 224-226

But that's the thing about McQueen, he cares enough to absolutely not care at all. His work, comprised of numerous social and political critiques, speak for themselves. He needn't say anything more at all. In the words of James Rondeau, "There are the same tensions between silence and language, motion and stillness... The same vocabulary of possibilities. And while Steve seems to be taking a dispassionate stance, he's very quietly advancing sophisticated political thinking about an issue..." and simply put, we couldn't agree more. It's about time a man learned to use silence as communication. Now rush off and down load youtube snippets of Hunger. Stat.


Afterthought: Thank you McQueen for giving us something to look forward to in the way of black film (cough).