in_authentic_b (an invisible cities excerpt)

invisible_cities is a feature-length, 9 channel installation project that explores the murky gulf of space between African and African-American identity, communication and social history. The video modules that comprise this work are designed to operate in a space together, playing simultaneously. The videos present contradictory documentary narratives regarding the same space, characters and time. The footage was shot on location in Ghana and London.

the excerpt: in_authentic_b (stereo, 00:05:04)
in_authentic_b portrays the impossible journey back to Africa. The classic, almost rhetoric motif of the search for one´s own roots ends up as a football game on dry African soil. It’s a familiar global exchange in a space that effortlessly, for a moment, cuts across the distance of society, politics, and geography. The game transports the unassuming participants to a place of shared rules and boundaries. The video captures the accidental moment that creates the link. The artist is playing the game and simultaneously trying to keep his digital eye, the camera, on the ball as well. The abstraction in the space between the two goals is the slippery substance on which we build our impression of a cultural exchange.

Works from the invisible_cities project have been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts; Christie’s, London; Futura Center for Contemporary Art, Prague; and the Center for Photography at Woodstock.