Michel Foucault was one of the most influential philosophers and cultural historians of the 20th Century, reconceiving power and identities as historically specific social relations and discourses. His studies challenged the works of Marx and Freud, offering new understandings of institutional practices and their effects on the human body and psyche in his studies of prisons, mental illness, medicine, and sexuality.
Year of the Spawn is an archival collage inspired by the synonymous song by the “gay church folk” band The Hidden Cameras. Wolf interpreted the song as an anthem for doomed youth. Having recently finished the historical film Teenage, Wolf collected over 100 hours of archival footage, featuring early 20th Century adolescents. Much of these historical newsreels feature bizarre and mysterious outtakes. These forgotten scraps became the fabric for this foreboding and melancholic music film.
In 1993 President Mitterrand visited Korea. On this visit Mitterrand promised that he would restore to Korea the 297 volumes of the Oe-Kyujanggak Archives (the royal protocols of Chosun Dynasty in Korea), pillaged by the French army in 1866 and now part of the collections in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (National Library of France). As a sign of intent, he assured the interested parties that a two-volume book, the Hyikyungwon-Wonsodogam-Uigwe, would be immediately returned.
Swerving between branded content, documentary, and a decolonial episode of MTV 'Cribs', the film revolves around a tour of an apartment which has supposedly been "given back" - led by reformed Native American impersonator, and frequent New Red Order collaborator, Jim Fletcher, alongside profiles of real individuals involved with the voluntary return of land to Indigenous peoples, organizations, and tribes. The film continues New Red Order's ongoing research into instances of settlers returning land to Indigenous peoples, a practice that has been growing exponentially over the past decade.
La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo is a recreation of one day at the Canto Grande prison in Peru, following women guerrillas from the Maoist Shining Path movement, from their morning marches to their bedtime chants. Kept isolated in their own cellblocks, the guerrillas refused to acknowledge that they were imprisoned. Their cellblocks were just another front in the People’s War: “shining trenches of combat”. This film shows the intense indoctrination and belief system of the brutal Latin American insurgency.
Fluid Frontiers is the fifth and final film in the series entitled The Diaspora Suite, exploring Asili’s personal relationship to the African Diaspora. Shot along the Detroit River, Fluid Frontiers explores the relationship between concepts of resistance and liberation, exemplified by the Underground Railroad, Broadside Press, and artworks of local Detroit Artists.
What do a luxury automobile, a cymbal, and a wall clock all have in common? What are the diverse attachments and experiences produced by those who make these things and those who consume them? What exchanges take place through the object itself—sensually, esthetically, abstractly? We often forget that most of the things we use are made by the labor of others, often in distant places, living dramatically different, diverse lives. What do these objects mean to them? How does their labor, their aspirations, their sense of alienation or satisfaction connect to ours?
Fifty years after the Cultural Revolution in China, two elderly Chinese women recite the propaganda songs they learn at the educational camps.
On the Flies of the Market Place deals with the idea of the European space, divided and sacrificed. In a visually surreal world of facts and emotions—using documents from books and magazines—the video suggests a re-reading of the European space, i.e. Eastern and Western Europe. Referencing history, philosophy (Kant), and art, the video elaborates on the idea of Eastern Europe as the indivisible residua of all European atrocities. Eastern Europe is a piece of shit and the bloody symptom of the political, cultural, and epistemological failures of the 20th century.
Executive produced by Sara Diamond at the Banff Art Centre, co-produced by Michelle Baughn and Suzanne Lacy, directed by Tom Weinberg and Dick Carter, and edited by Holen Kahn.
Irreverent yet poignant, The Eternal Frame is a re-enactment of the assassination of John F. Kennedy as seen in the famous Zapruder film. This home movie was immediately confiscated by the FBI, yet found its way into the visual subconscious of the nation. The Eternal Frame concentrates on this event as a crucial site of fascination and repression in the American mindset.
"The intent of this work was to examine and demystify the notion of the presidency, particularly Kennedy, as image archetype...."
— Doug Hall, 1984
The Cyan Garden considers the limits of giving form to the past which cannot cohere into memory. In part filmed on ‘Lucky', a discontinued b&w 16mm film reel stock intended for military aerial detection, the film revolves around a radio station that was not supposed to be detected and an Airbnb apartment ‘The Lover’, run by the artist’s friend in their hometown. Between 1969 and 1981, a Malaysian communist underground radio in exile Voice of the Malayan Revolution resided in what is now soon to be a resort.
Employing footage from an obscure 8mm film trailer for Battle for the Planet of the Apes to highlight the unstable relationship between the real, historical past and the distant, imaginary future, this project revolves around a central question: Is alien-ness indeed the metaphor for the 20th Century as power relationships have been embodied within our subconscious? Is there a relationship between these forgotten formats and the discontinued political ideologies that they depict?
In 1973 Joan Nestle co-founded the Lesbian Herstory Archives, an essential collection of documents, writings, and artifacts of lesbian cultural history. In 1979 she began writing erotic stories and has published two collections of writings: A Restricted Country (1987) and A Fragile Union (1998). She took a controversial stance in opposition to the 1980s feminist anti-pornography movement, thus becoming a fervent pro-sex activist in the “Sex Wars.” Interview by Nina Levitt.
An experimental documentary video project about individuals who have been transformed from so called “ordinary” citizens into activists, Witness To The Future seeks connections that unite people of all cultures, communities, races, and economic classes as they struggle for environmental and social change.
Blending live action staged as if in a dollhouse with rarely seen archival footage from the National Archives, the fantastically true story of how America entered WWI is told. Through vibrant historical characters like labor leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and German naval officer Franz von Rintelen this loose adaptation of John dos Passos’ 42nd Parallel, explores the timeless issues of radical labor politics and the domestic effects of war.
Seven homosexuals, ages ranging 28-85, and strangers to one another, convene in a Los Angeles bookstore. The following unscripted conversation is facilitated by the filmmaker in collaboration with community organizer, founding member of the Radical Faeries, and Jungian psychologist, Dr. Don Kilhefner, and explores community, organizing, identity and intersectionality. Gay Men's Book Club is an intergenerational portrait of a community and the social dynamics found within informal learning environments.
The latest in Muntadas and Reese's series documenting the selling of the American presidency features political ads from the 1950s to ads from the 2012 campaigns, and highlights the development of the political strategy and marketing techniques of the TV campaign process.
Statement
A last stand for the silent guardians of the old order. Take It Down is a filmic day of reckoning for the Old Confederate South. What is up must come down, like the Confederate soldier monuments standing in court house squares across the South. At long last, a grand inversion! Solarized film makes positives bleed into negatives. The South is renewed.
This film looks to North Carolina to describe the cultural fissure that runs through the South, a legacy of the Civil War. In the context of the divisive Trump presidency and the increasing visibility of white supremacist activism, these Confederate memorials have become sites of conflicting politics and historical narratives.
Historians agree that a majority of Confederate statues were erected as propaganda tools legitimizing racism in the era of Jim Crow laws. For example, “Silent Sam”, a statue depicted in the film, was erected on the quad of the University of North Carolina campus. In an act of civil disobedience in Fall 2018, students and protestors tore down the statue in a statement against white supremacist oppression.
For the November 13, 2015 opening of the Hiroshima Panels by Iri and Toshi Maruki at Pioneer Works, Eiko performed her solo in honor of the Hiroshima Panels and their creators. Japanese-style painter Iri Maruki, born in Hiroshima, and Western-style painter Toshi Maruki, who went into Hiroshima city just three days after the bombing. The artists decided to paint the panels together, which illuminate the human experiences of the Atomic Bomb. They spent 30 years painting the fifteen Hiroshima Panels, six of which were on display at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Based on Emanuel Admassu's essay Menged Merkato, an architectural analysis and historical journey of the largest open-air market in Africa, located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Merkato was developed during the Italian occupation of Addis Ababa to segregate the markets of the locals and the newcomers. Unlike the earlier circular formation which centered the royal palace, Merkato was built on a grid which allowed for a dispersed flow facilitating dynamic interactions and exchanges.
CB is an experimental bio-pic: its heroine, Charlotte Brontë. A collaboration between Doug Ischar and Tom Daws, CB was commissioned by the Laumeier Museum, St. Louis, for their inaugural Nightlight series.
I Was There is a trilogy of experimental documentary films that explores the problem of radiation, our society's fading collective memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the unresolved debate between ethics and science. These series concern the immediate effects of weaponized nuclear technology, as invisible poison, on the human body.
This tape was shot in August 1972 by the same crew that had convened for pioneer video collective TVTV’s (Top Value Television) project Four More Years. Videotaped at the 1972 Republican Convention, it begins with the cameraman taping from inside the press area, with protestors from the People’s Band outside at the fence. There is footage of girl- and boyscout groups. A group of protestors are shown calling for non-violent blockades of the delegates' entrance. Tear gas is feared, and there are interviews with tear-gassed people and medics.
Broadcasters across Ireland and Britain have entered into a blackout strike. The workers are transmitting a programme bringing censored voices back onto the airwaves.
"In the late 1980s, as violence continues in the north of Ireland, censorship is increasingly being enforced on British and Irish television. In response, broadcasters have entered into a blackout strike, occupying several stations and transmitting a programme bringing censored voices back onto the airwaves."
