Walker Moving Image Commissions 2018

Walker Moving Image Commissions returns this fall. Artists Kevin Jerome Everson and Deborah Stratman have each been commissioned to create new videos responding to the inspiration, inquiry, and influence of key artists in the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection. Everson connects to gospel music and iconic rock-and-roll singer Little Richard in William Klein’s documentary The Little Richard Story (1980) through the African American communities of Mansfield, Ohio, while Stratman incorporates the sound, text, and teachings of Maya Deren in a montage responding to artist Barbara Hammer’s unused film footage. Drawing together an array of footage, photographs, and texts from archival and contemporary sources, the two new works reach into the past to explore contemporary life, art, and creative expression. The new commissions will be available to view online through January 8, 2019 and in gallery as part of the exhibition, Platforms: Collection and Commissions, opening November 15, 2018.

Kevin Jerome Everson
music from the edge of the allegheny plateau

Rappers and gospel singers, on the streets and in their homes—music from the edge of the allegheny plateau presents different generations from the African American communities of Mansfield, Ohio, sharing their passions, their talents, and their messages of faith and ambition through music and gesture. Filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson was inspired by William Klein’s The Little Richard Story (1980), a film that tells the story of the rock-and-roll icon’s life through the eyes and experiences of friends, family, and impersonators. (2018, video, 7 minutes)

Deborah Stratman
Vever

Drawing together film footage, texts, and drawings, Deborah Stratman poetically connects three generations of women filmmakers who separately, and now together, have disrupted their filmmaking practices and confronted moments of vulnerability in their work. Vever is a montage of unfinished film footage taken by artist Barbara Hammer during a 1975 motorcycle trip to Guatemala, with evocative sounds from Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), and Deren’s reflections from her 1953 book Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. (2018, video, 12 minutes)

The Walker Moving Image Commissions 2018 are viewable online here through January 8 and will be in gallery during the summer of 2019.

Major support for Walker Moving Image Commissions is provided by the Bentson Foundation.