Tableau Vivant: The Living Pictures of Kendrick Lamar
A tableau vivant refers to a static, living picture containing actors, or models that are usually in costume, carefully posed, with props and/or scenery, and may be theatrically illuminated. These dynamic scenes are theatrical as well as visual. In film or live theatre the performers sometimes briefly freeze in position for the tableau vivant effect. After the release of the music video for “squabble up” from the very recent “gnx” album, I realized Kendrick Lamar’s common practice of staging his scenes.
In the Dave Free–directed music video for “N95,” Lamar mixes gritty and real-life environments with surreal architectural spaces including the Fort Worth Water Gardens. Architectural designer Anne Dereaux notes how the song is a cultural commentary on dropping façades and aesthetics in embrace of a more purposeful life:
In the shots of the water garden, you don’t see anything around it; the only thing that gives you a sense of scale is Kendrick… I think that those visuals coupled with the lyrics are saying, ‘What would you do for aesthetic?’ ‘Who’s the hypocrite?’ ‘Who considers themselves irrelevant?’
This brings me to “Not Like Us”, a popular ‘diss-track’ and video released earlier this year and the video for “squabble up” that was released earlier this week. In the former video, there are several staged scenes, including lines that correspond with lyrics such as:
Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young
You better not ever go to cell block one
In one scene we see a pair of iconic KEF Reference 105 Series II speakers, a bed, two cinder blocks and the backside view of a strategically placed painting leaning against a wall. Kendrick is dressed in clothing a prisoner might wear down to the house shoes. He has an afro hair pick in his hair that calls up Drake’s Nothing Was The Same album cover.
In the video for “squabble up” we see Kendrick in a similar placement as in “Not Like Us”: in the center and facing the camera/viewer. The difference in the new video is that we (viewers) and Kendrick never leave the room, which is designed to pay homage to The Roots “Next Movement” (1999) while celebrating and centering West Coast street culture.
For nearly a decade Canadian artist Sylvia Grace Borda has been staging tableaux for the camera within the Google Street View engine. Borda’s works combine photography, video and emergent technologies. Her works are in line with her interests in “re-addressing public views about specific socio-cultural landscapes and how cultural symbols may be co-opted to form new media platforms.”
My thought was: What happens when I incorporate tableaux into the text prompts for my generative AI work. I used Kendrick Lamar’s living picture music videos as inspiration and MidJourney’s ‘Pan’ option to make it happen. The Pan option allows you to expand the canvas of an image in a chosen direction without changing the content of the original image. The newly expanded canvas will be filled in using guidance from the prompt and the original image. Thus, the main subject (ex. Kendrick Lamar) remains in the center while the tool pushes the borders left and right to tell more of the story.
Kendrick Lamar’s recent music videos are a love letter to the city and region where he was born and raised. The use of the tableau vivant enables videographer(s) to keep the main subject central in the frame while using space (in the room or onstage) include references that are clear enough for most people to catch as well as others that require a particular knowledge of a specific culture. I’m interested in using this technique with the Pan option in future GenAI artwork. What stories can be told about a subject, then expanded beyond our view?