My imagined nations

My Imagined Nations is an expanded cinema installation constructed as a walk-through exhibit. My Imagined Nations searches for a process based, non-capital driven practice, while meditating on landscape, language, boundaries/nation states, and world building; it centers Blackness, community, and identity formation.

Examining Brecht’s Alienation Effect as a method to highlight empathy in making and viewing a body of work, My Imagined Nations considers alternatives to carceral cinematic conventions, explores the exilic experience of combating expectations on Black bodies in a racial imaginary, and envisions worlds beyond the one we currently occupy (temporally and spatially; socially and psychically).

Stacked with layers of meaning, characters, logics, and possibilities, My Imagined Nations reflects the limitless potential of the concept of Blackness – breaking free from its intended use – as deep as the undiscovered ocean depths, and as infinite as space which holds the multitudes of universes. Various languages are considered as locations for re-imaging form and being and an academically contained arts practice is disrupted as a site for empathy.

This writing serves as a lexicon to understand the connective tissue between past works (‘Super Series’, initiated 2016-2019), the present moment, and future implications with works in progress. It is also a guidepost of discussions that happened during the near week long installation, where the author conversed with each person that entered the space from 9am-9pm, Tuesday, May 10, 2022 – Sunday, May 15, 2022.