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Media: super 8 film, superimpose paintings and drawings, hybrid with experimental sounds, hybrid text, continuous loop; color, and performance transferred to HD Video on a LED monitor in a wooden box.
We are the Same under the Sky (2021-22, 11:09 min) is an experimental non-linear performative narrative that focus on the relationship between spoken and body language, memory and place, geographical and social displacement. I create hybrid non-linear narrative videos by superimposing paintings and drawings on archival materials such as 8mm film home movies from Haiti, Benin, and Jamaica, and mixing experimental sounds, constructed languages, and staged performance. In narrating the story, I adopt the technique of the silent films in alternating music and caption. Traditionally, in silent films, the music was a key to the mood and emotional state of the characters. Similarly, in my experimental videos, the unspoken scenes, the character’s facial expressions and body language act as another set of signifiers. Sound and narrative are approached by way of two distinctive processes: first, the creation of an artificial language by collaging four separate languages, two traditional Western languages merged with two Creole post-colonial dialects—I use French, Haitian Creole, English and Jamaican Patois and remix texts from Caribbean travel logs and Haitian and Jamaican folklore; second, an experimental soundtrack in the tradition of John Cage, using ballads of Haitian and French origin, European classical music, French and American hip hop, as the vehicle of the story. |