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Sight Unseen is a commissioned video contribution and group collective performance that could be performed anywhere in the world. The video was internationally screened during the three day summit/conference on the agency of artists and creatives in shaping resilient cities, and published by an online peer review journal. The summit included researchers, policy makers, metropolitan leaders, curators, and creatives from around the world. (Frieraum/Free space description below). St Louis rests just south of the Missouri and Mississippi River’s Confluence. My video is a reflection as first-hand city witness at the confluence of the global pandemic (the smaller river) merging with the social justice movement (the bigger river) intersecting in the center of the Heartland, downtown St Louis, USA.

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For the remote collective performance, I designed a small action that any group can perform online. (1) place your thumb over the video lens on your computer. (2) Thinking of whatever some comes to mind, tap out the rhythm of the song while covering and uncovering the video lens by tapping your thumb. Try not to lift your thumb too far from the lens, cover your image and play with the light (3) Watch the other light players and see what collective rhythms emerge. Worth remarking, I was working on the design of this performance while also group-teaming a Freshman architecture studio, and worked out the kinks with an end of the semester online performance. For the video, I directed and co-edited a 15-minute video reflecting on the state of cities by focusing on the city where I live. It was the first summer of Covid-19. Black Lives Matter was expanding in outreach starting from St Louis. I was living in a downtown loft in St Louis with my family. Downtown was vacant, except at night, when the empty streets became drag strips with pit-stop crews and empty parking-lot serving as winner’s circles. The mayor counteracted the drag racing by placing concrete jersey barriers at intersections, forcing five lanes of traffic to merge into one lane in order to pass through the barricades. From the drag-racers point of view, this improved the desirability – and difficulty, of the course. Often victors were celebrated with gunfire. Car accidents were frequent. Local property owners shared CCTV videos of motion sensors capturing collisions with other cars, public infrastructure, and buildings. I lived just out of sightline to the main winners circle and pit-crew stops, but close enough to hear it all.

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I decided to use the footage of the wreckage very sparingly, and the gunfire that I recorded I didn’t use at all. In the end, I didn’t want to be a voyeur or fall prey to the lazy obviousness of glamorizing negative sensational perceptions of the city where I call home.

From all the speakers contributions and content over the three day summit, Collateral Journal – an online-only, peer-reviewed journal selected four contributions. Sight Unseen is one of them.

Importantly, this is the second time I worked with ArtBOX creative artist agency, which I continue to work with today.

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