The Ballad of Skinny Lattes and Vintage Clothing takes the viewer on a journey into the dark heart of capitalism revealing the artist’s culpability in a process of globalisation. Underlying themes emerge within the installation including the city, public space, psychogeography, Jewish cultural identity, the fetishisation of “vintage”, gentrification, financial markets and a revolutionary middle class. The Ballad of Skinny Lattes is made up of a number of components – music, Super 8 film, text and interrelated sound works which draw the viewer and listener into an immersive six-movement noise opera, presented in various contexts as a performance installation, exhibition and lecture performance. William Blake, Wall Street, the London riots, Berlin, the Occupy Movement and the Futurist Art of Noises manifesto are some of the various inspirations and constituents of the work.
I have merged technical processes together, recording sounds on vintage analogue machines as well as using the latest digital recording and editing techniques to create dense, layered, epic and complex soundscapes.
The Ballad of Skinny Lattes is a pertinent and ambitious work, which explores contemporary themes of Jewish identity, global markets and gentrification. An exploration of globalisation that began with the making of a performance work on Wall Street in September 2008, culminating in the financial crisis that besets us today.
An edition of the work is now held in the permanent collection of the Estorick Collection in London. The fictional Skinny Vintage Investment Corporation website is a digital work of art in its own right.
Joseph Young :: Artist 