Memory

The two related compilations of Julia Hechtman's video works titled Acts of Disappearance: Death and Acts of Disappearance: Environmental document twenty years of the artist's ongoing exploration of life, death, and humanity's place in time and space. The pieces are often performative, gestural, or conceptual in their clean and elegant examination of messy and complex ideas.

The Diaspora Suite

Filmed on location in Salvador, Brazil (the last city in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw slavery) and Harlem, NY ( an international stronghold of the African Diaspora), Many Thousands Gone draws parallels between a summer afternoon on the streets of the two cities. A silent version of the film was given to jazz multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee to use an interpretive score. The final film is the combination of the images and McPhee’s real time “sight reading” of the score.

This is the audiovisual translation of the Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History.

For 5 months, Clarke held workshops with young women, ages 18-23 years old, who were incarcerated at the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility in Camarillo, California. As part of the weekly classes, the wards painted their faces and made digital self portraits. In the corner of the room was a video camera mounted on a tripod with a remote control. Each week the women sat alone in front of the camera and made a Diary tape. Inside Out includes several of the diaries.