Flash in the Metropolitan ​Blankets for Indians – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

directed by Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucy Skaer, USA 2006, 3'30'

Shot in the New York Metropolitan Museum on 16mm film, it leads us through a collection of art from the Middle East, Africa, and Oceania.Monuments, masks, and bowls are illuminated only for a moment with a flash light, allowing us a glance, a fleeting experience of looking at museum objects.

directed by Ken Jacobs, USA 2012, 57', 3D

The title of Ken Jacobs’ film refers to the smallpox-contaminated blankets distributed to indigenous Americans. Blankets for Indiansblends a stereoscopic study of water spurting from New York’s City Hall fountain with an intimately detailed portrait of an Occupy Wall Street march. Jacobs, using freeze-frames, subtitles, and 3D, creates unexpected connections that seamlessly flow from an intimate portrait to political commentary. Jacobs questions the contemporary conditions of socio-political struggle, its relation to aesthetics, and the labor necessary to produce both.