On Oct. 31, the one-year anniversary of MF DOOM’s untimely passing, over two dozen Bay Area artists are taking part in “DOOMSDAY,” an art and music festival in the hip-hop artist’s memory.
Dozens of artists will set up booths to sell DOOM-inspired art in the parking lot at the corner of 18th and Valencia in San Francisco’s Mission District. Half of the profits from event sales will go to MF DOOM’s estate.
Jason Jägel, a Bay Area artist well known for his collaborations with DOOM, is one of a group of local creatives putting on the event. “You can say very clearly with certain artists in the world: there’s before their existence and there’s after their existence. And the world is never the same once they’ve stepped on the scene. And that’s actually a thousand percent true of DOOM,” says Jägel.
In Jägel’s telling, planning for the event began when Alán González, the creative director at Thrasher, and Ryen Motzek, co-founder of Atlas Skateboards, approached him with their idea for a DOOM tribute show. Jägel agreed, feeling that Bay Area artists would leap at the chance to celebrate DOOM’s legacy.
“MF DOOM is somebody who has inspired a lot of creativity with people, myself included,” says Jägel. “And I think the Bay Area is a place that has wild, wild amounts of creativity. And so for Bay Area artists, I think the idea of creating works that directly benefit the estate was particularly thrilling.”
