Following on from the two screenings of Jem’s work at The Horse Hospital, here’s a link to Jem’s vimeo site for the Gravity Hill Newsreels – twelve short observations about Occupy Wall Street (2011/2012, HD, Series One first 5 shorts, total time 24 min, Series Two 7 more shorts. total time 40 min.).
“The films are modest, small observations rather than broad declarations. There’s nothing definitive about them and they’re sometimes bumpy, searching experiments, like the movement itself. Some were shot in a day, cut the next, and just put out there. I didn’t want them to be precious … My concentration has been on making simple documents of a movement unfolding in daylight, rain, darkness, and in a moment of vital expansion––the Times Square mobilization of October 15. Of course, it’s never actually simple, especially with a movement changing so rapidly––there are things going on that are so inspiring and others that are really a drag. Do you document them both? And how do you do it without betraying either ideals or actualities? I am, after all, making these films in solidarity, as a participant, but I have real qualms about the suppression of ambiguity that almost invariably marks agitprop.” Jem Cohen, Art Forum, 2011. The full text can be found here.
And here’s a couple of interviews in which Jem discusses the work: Walker Art Center, 2012 and The White Review, 2014.