Frank Ocean
It’s pretty difficult for Frank Ocean to have the best album roll-out of 2017 when he never even released an album that year. In 2016, Frank Ocean released “Blonde”, a year’s best for many. However, the album still hasn’t stopped receiving attention– Frank Ocean extended “Blonde” from being only a mere album to a collective label for all of his projects in 2017. These include radio shows, clothes, videos, photographs, books, and more projects that the R&B artist took on over this past year.
Ocean was able to fabricate a fascinating world of culture that immersed fans in something more than music; a community. As he teased fans with anything–radio shows to tumblr posts– a community of individuals found themselves tied together with a common bond of interest and excitement for the artist.
Personally, waiting with other Frank Ocean fans was one of my favorite activities of this year; group chats on Twitter were made, along with a few friends, to gossip and discuss his work. Aside from creating such an emotionally invested fandom, Frank Ocean himself is just so interesting. As a man of mystery and few words, Frank Ocean exhibits his style with such suave and elegance that can make anything enticing. Frank Ocean did not only keep creating beautiful music singles into 2017, but also kept being a fan of his just as exciting.
Beijing Silvermine
Beijing Silvermine (@Beijing_Silvermine) has to be one of the most interesting Instagram accounts out there. The account is a project by the French collector and artist Thomas Sauvin who has created an archive of half a million photo negatives salvaged over the last seven years from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing.
Beijing Silvermine offers a glimpse into the life of Chinese families decades after the Cultural Revolution. The photographs depict architecture, technology, people–anything that can have a photo taken of it is featured on Beijing Silvermine. However, what makes this project so interesting is the sheer raw exhibition of family life. While all of the photographs are of Chinese families, they clearly tell narratives that are reflective of families across the world: pain, happiness, worry–anything and everything a family has felt and experienced before. The Instagram account provides a sense of familiarity that is truly honest.
Aside from families, the photographs also depict pretty interesting situations; some of the photographs are extremely provocative and personal, while others are truly comical. My personal favorite is of a little boy standing on top of an alligator, unaware that the alligator is about to open its mouth and take a bite. Another notable photograph is of a beautiful young couple in a hospital room holding a child. The photographs truly do make you wonder: “Who was this?”, “why were they here?”, and “what happened next?”.
Beijing Silvermine is an account that does not depend on instant gratification like most social media celebrities often do. It is a truly eye-opening project that pushes individuals to further their knowledge and understanding of different parts of the world. Hopefully in 2018 Beijing Silvermine will expand to find film negatives lost across the world as a way of educating followers of family life, structure, and society across the world. Hopefully viewers will see some similarities, too.