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Movie (wmv, 5.6 MB)

Alex Agnant
Colgate University

Subject Listing - Studio Art
Advisor: Dr. John Knecht

Friday, Visual Art Session 3, Presentation 3, University Gallery

REDISCOVERING AMERICAN SLAVERY

The remnants of slavery and its horrors continue to haunt America and its people today. Still a work in progress, this experimental video short is a journey/experience through the history of slavery in America in an attempt to make conscious the unaddressed, yet integral, presence of slavery in America. Emphasizing the repressed signs of slavery in American architecture, institutions, and pop culture, a version of America's slave history is told using contemporary footage while looking at paintings produced during slave times. Starting with the exhibition of Africans in Portugal that led to the slave trade, this short is the documentation of an exhibit in itself. Not only about slavery; this project is also about memory and how historical memory can be created through the use of video and film, as has been seen in both Hollywood and documentary films. Lastly, my authorship in this film will play the important role of rendering history not as the absolute truth but as an organization and re-organization of different truths. The layering of image over image and image over text works to show the continual rendering of one history underneath the present time.

Alex Agnant (Advisor: John Knecht)
Department of Art and Art History
Colgate University
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, New York 13346

Advisor: Dr. John Knecht, Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of Art & Art History and Film & Media Studies, Art and Art Histoy, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY