Grace Jones – Corporate Cannibal, 2008

Pleased to meet you, pleased to have you on my plate. Grace Jones’s Corporate Cannibal opens with a greeting that immediately turns predatory. Written at a time when, as Jones put it, she was “very obsessed” with corporate greed, the song responds to the years of speculative finance and risky lending that had pushed the global financial system to the brink of collapse. Jones assumes the role of a self-described “man-eating machine”, giving voice to an economic system driven by endless consumption, where seduction and violence become difficult to separate. Filmed in black and white, the video focuses almost entirely on Jones’s face and upper body. Her image constantly morphs and adapts, appearing at once human and machinic, seductive and monstrous. It embodies a system that survives by absorbing, mutating and reinventing itself.

Grace Jones is a singer, performer and artist whose work has consistently challenged conventions of identity, gender and power through music, image and performance. Emerging from the cultural landscapes of disco, fashion and experimental cinema, her practice operates at the intersection of popular culture and artistic production, using the body and voice as sites of transformation and critique.