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A Meditation on Nature in the Absence of an Eclipse

Crystal Z Campbell

2017 00:08:12 United StatesEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video
Tags:
Activism , Body , Environment , Health

Description

A Meditation on Nature in the Absence of an Eclipse is a poetic glimpse into the ways centuries of extraction, racism, pollution, and nature's commodification have altered our relationship to sacred land, water, and resources. A constellation of intersecting histories and source material include testimony from a Water Protector at Standing Rock protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, contaminated water in Flint Michigan, and original footage of Hierve el Agua near Oaxaca, Mexico, a rock formation revered for its healing properties. Interspersed are archival images of gardens, hands of artists and children brushing their teeth—a reflection on the innocuous ways in which contaminated water and resources shape the banal rituals of individuals' lives. A watermark on the image extends the water spill, branding testimony and blocking access, ultimately deciding who will control critical narratives of environmental racism and discourse. 

Originally commissioned by Wave Hill Public Garden & Cultural Center, the work was made in 2017 and reedited in 2020.

About Crystal Z Campbell

Crystal Z Campbell is an experimental filmmaker, multidisciplinary artist, and writer of Black, Filipinx, and Chinese descents. In their sonically driven films, Campbell centers the underloved and finds complexity in public secrets—fragments of information known by many but undertold or unspoken. Campbell was the 2021 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts and was a featured filmmaker of the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar programmed by Almudena Escobar López and Sky Hopinka. 

Campbell's artworks and moving image projects probe historical amnesia and reimagine archival fragments. Campbell's work engages with the history of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre; medical ethics and Henrietta Lacks's “immortal” cell line; gentrification via a 35mm film relic salvaged from a demolished Black activist theater in Brooklyn (The Slave Theater); embodiment, migration, and unsolicited monuments in a Swedish coastal village; and environmental racism, water, and what remains sacred. 

Campbell’s work has been exhibited and screened internationally: Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Artists Space, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Everson Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Bemis, Walker Art Center, European Media Art Festival (EMAF), The Drawing Center, Nest, ICA-Philadelphia, BLOCK Museum, REDCAT, Prismatic Ground, Artissima, Studio Museum of Harlem, Bemis, Semana de Cinema Negro in Belo Horizonte, Project Row Houses, Museum of Glass, SculptureCenter, EMPAC, and DocLisboa, amongst others. Campbell's solo museum exhibition at St. Louis Art Museum takes place in Fall 2024. 

Campbell's additional honors include a Harvard Radcliffe Film Study Center Fellowship, Pollock- Krasner Award, MAP Fund, Duke Center for Documentary Studies Fellowship, Franklin Furnace Award, and others from MacDowell, Skowhegan, Rijksakademie, Whitney ISP, and Black Spatial Relics. Campbell’s writing is featured in two artist books published by Visual Studies Workshop Press and the artist has made contributions to World Literature Today, Monday Journal, GARAGE, Hyperallergic and Beacon Press. Campbell is currently a Visiting Associate Professor of Art and Media Study at the University at Buffalo in New York.

Photo by Melissa Lukenbaugh