David Plylar: I’d like to start with something that’s a bit unusual for me, which is not a question, but rather a statement, and this is that I had the opportunity in 2012 to put together a chamber concert in South Africa at the Grahamstown Festival, which is kind of an obscure part of South […]
No president has ever been subjected to the incessant slander leveled at him, the relentless daily assault that would drive most mortals to a permanent fetal position. Much of it has been outright lies. But he shrugs it off and spends every waking moment addressing the nagging problems we face and combating the forces who […]
In 2013, Mohammad Ali Atassi and several colleagues formed Bidayyat: an organization that sought to teach Syrians how to make documentaries so they could take ownership of their wartime narratives. It was one of several such initiatives in Syria. An anonymous collective called Abounaddara had been active since 2010 with a focus on “emergency cinema,” […]
This post is a placeholder or a scaffold for something I will return to in the future. For now, all I want to say is that I am now clearer on one reason for my maintaining a stubborn, some may say perverse, commitment to ongoing learning from and teaching with documenta 14, split between Athens, […]
Every night I sat watching [TV] with a shutter release in my hand… In the middle of the week the shooting of students by National Guardsmen occurred at Kent State University. This tragic event produced the most powerful images that emerged from the camera, yet I felt a reluctance to use any of them. It […]
