VIEWFINDER
Director, Editor, Sound Designer
23’00 Minutes
2020
VIEWFINDER (2020) explores displacement, somatic archives, and a peculiar Bag Lady monument in a coastal town in Sweden. The film is an intimate document and question about the politics of imagination: is it possible to imagine places in new ways?
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VIEWFINDER
Director, Editor, Sound Designer
23’00 Minutes
2020
VIEWFINDER considers questions of immigration and displacement alongside Sweden's postcolonial legacy. Filmed entirely in Sweden, I worked with performers who immigrated to Sweden from Cuba, Congo, and Eritrea to consider the body as an archive. Enacting gestures and rituals in domestic and public spaces, the film merges ideas of the body as an archive while providing a counternarrative of a coastal spa town in Sweden.
VIEWFINDER
Director, Editor, Sound Designer
23’00 Minutes
2020
Sites in the film are critical to Varberg’s construction as a place of care, health, and a haven: Kalbadhuset, a viral anti-fascist monument (Bag Lady), the home of Varberg politician Lasse Diding, the forest, and the sea. Campbell’s film is an intimate insertion into local and national archives, a document, and a question about the politics of imagination: is it possible to imagine places in new ways?
GO-RILLA MEANS WAR
Writer, Editor, Research, Voiceover, 19'03" minutes with credits, 35mm Film Salvaged from former Black Civil Rights Theater Transferred to 2K, Stereo Sound
2017
Go-Rilla Means War is a 35mm film salvaged from a now demolished Black Civil Rights Theater in Brooklyn. The installation for Go-Rilla Means War included a video projection, overhead projector with an excerpted archival interview about community, and 5 large, double-sided banners which hung from the ceiling. The banners included archival images
from a coloring book intended for children to share positive remarks about restoring the neighborhood.
GO-RILLA MEANS WAR
Writer, Editor, Research, Voiceover, 19'03" minutes with credits, 35mm Film Salvaged from former Black Civil Rights Theater Transferred to 2K, Stereo Sound, 2017
Banners featured modified archival images from a coloring book intended for children to share positive remarks about restoring the neighborhood.
GO-RILLA MEANS WAR
Writer, Editor, Research, Voiceover, 19'03" minutes with credits, 35mm Film Salvaged from former Black Civil Rights Theater Transferred to 2K, Stereo Sound, 2017
Restoration inevitably contributed to Bed-Stuy being one of the fastest gentrifying cities today, still displacing many people of color. Sites such as the theater were not deemed worthy of historical preservation. I have collaborated with the unknown filmmaker to complete the film with sound, a voiceover, and credits. The film is a double-narrative, and a time-based relic of gentrification.
GO-RILLA MEANS WAR
Writer, Editor, Research, Voiceover, 19'03" minutes with credits, 35mm Film Salvaged from former Black Civil Rights Theater Transferred to 2K, Stereo Sound, 2017
Go-Rilla Means War has been exhibited in different formats (a site-specific installation and single-channel film) and often in cities experiencing rapid gentrification.
SLICK
Digital Photo on Archival Paper
20x18 inches
2019
SLICK imagines the urban landscape of Tulsa, Oklahoma and surrounding development as sites to explore layered
histories of land grabs, boosterism, and slow violences connected to oil histories.
SLICK
Digital Photo on Archival Paper
20x18 inches
2019
SLICK is a series of photographs and a feature-length video centering Oklahoma and its history of black townships,
oil, and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
SLICK
Digital Photo on Archival Paper
20x18 inches
2019
SLICK is filmed on critical sites around Tulsa. Nearly 40 blocks were destroyed in the affluent area of Greenwood
during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, but the community rebuilt. However, this highway is an example
of urban renewal that further dispersed the black community and we’ve activated it with gestures of sonic graffiti.
*My proposed BSR project is nested in this larger project: SLICK.
SLICK
Digital Photo on Archival Paper
20x18 inches
2019
SLICK is filmed on critical sites around Tulsa. Nearly 40 blocks were destroyed in the affluent area of Greenwood
during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, but the community rebuilt. However, this highway is an example
of urban renewal that further dispersed the black community and we’ve activated it with gestures of sonic graffiti.
*My proposed BSR project is nested in this larger project: SLICK.
IS THIS NOT A LEGACY
Site-Specific Vinyl Installation on Stairs at The Gilcrease Museum (Specializes in Indigenous and Western
Artifacts/Archaeology)
Dimensions: 26x7 ft
2019
Is This Not A Legacy is a love poem for the objects and human remains housed in the Gilcrease Museum ((Western art and indigenous artifacts/archaeology). The text on the risers read:
THIS IS NOT A SCRATCH
TO MARK THE DEEPEST AFFECTION AND SIMPLEST PLEASURE
THIS IS NOT A SMILE
TO COMPENSATE FOR AN ABUSE OR INJURY
THIS IS NOT A SCREAM
TO RELAY AMUSEMENT OR TO RELAX TENSION
THIS IS NOT A STEP
TO RETURN SOMETHING OR SOMEONE TO THEIR OWNER OR THEIR PLACE OF ORIGIN
ON THE WAY TO THE MOON, WE DISCOVERED THE EARTH
Digital Video, Stereo Sound (09:49 Minute Video Loop)
2012-2018
*Video generated from archive of New York Times during NYC Blackout in November 1977. Sound is synthetic needle touching vinyl. This work connects the NYC Blackout with the alleged birth of hip-hop––a subculture which emerged from an socio-political and economic rupture in New York City's infrastructural fabric.
NOTES FROM BLACK WALL STREET (I AIN'T SORRY)
Digital Video Loop (2'00" minutes), 2000 copies of report from Tulsa Race Riot Commission for audience
to take, 21 paintings over archival photographs, 2 vinyl banners, Digital Video, Monitor, Stereo Sound, Vinyl, Paint, Xerox copies, Lights, Mixed-Media on Archival Photo, Paper, Two Conjoined Rooms: 30x12 ft and 8x10 ft
2018
Notes from Black Wall Street is an ongoing series of paintings over archival images of Black Wall Street, also known as Greenwood, that was firebombed during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Each work in this series is a mini-monument to a community that rebuilt, but was again dispersed with urban renewal.
NOTES FROM BLACK WALL STREET (I AIN'T SORRY)
Digital Video Loop (2'00" minutes), 2000 copies of report from Tulsa Race Riot Commission for audience
to take, 21 paintings over archival photographs, 2 vinyl banners, Digital Video, Monitor, Stereo Sound, Vinyl, Paint, Xerox copies, Lights, Mixed-Media on Archival Photo, Paper, Two Conjoined Rooms: 30x12 ft and 8x10 ft
2018
This installation included video and a 40-page report from the Tulsa Race Riot Commission available for viewers to take away.
MODEL CITIZEN: HERE I STAND (***More info at end of page)
Site-Specific Installation consisting of Five Dual-Sided Banners (ranging from 2ft x 15-30ft long each), Paint, Three Digital Looping Videos, Three Projectors, Speakers with Looping Stereo Sound, Wood, Drywall
Dimensions Variable
2018
MODEL CITIZEN: HERE I STAND (***More info at end of page)
Site-Specific Installation consisting of Five Dual-Sided Banners (ranging from 2ft x 15-30ft long each), Paint, Three Digital Looping Videos, Three Projectors, Speakers with Looping Stereo Sound, Wood, Drywall
Dimensions Variable
2018
MODEL CITIZEN: HERE I STAND (***More info at end of page)
Site-Specific Installation consisting of Five Dual-Sided Banners (ranging from 2ft x 15-30ft long each), Paint, Three Digital Looping Videos, Three Projectors, Speakers with Looping Stereo Sound, Wood, Drywall
Dimensions Variable
2018
MODEL CITIZEN: HERE I STAND
Site-Specific Installation consisting of Five Dual-Sided Banners, Paint, Three Digital Looping Videos, Three Projectors, Speakers with Looping Stereo Sound, Wood, Drywall
Variable Size
2018
Model Citizen: Here I Stand fictionalizes the complex narrative of polymath activist, actor, artist, singer, author, and athlete, Paul Robeson. Model Citizen: Here I Stand interrogates the politics of representation, perception, and witnessing to consider intersections of figure drawing, gaze, spatial politics, capture, and stillness as a form of resistance.
The work features a live performance drawing from archival photos of Paul Robeson that intsersect with figure drawing as institutional surveillance, and the land of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, aka Greenwood, on which this performance took place. Greenwood was a predominantly black and very affluent community, which was firebombed in 1921. Tulsa was filled with silences about this history, and the work connects the silencing of Robeson to the muted histories of Greenwood through abstraction.
There are five banners (ranging from 15-30 feet in length, but all are two feet wide). The banners are double-sided, one side of the quilts feature combinations of archival photos of Paul Robeson with unique and appropriated quilt images. The other side of the banners feature the following five statements:
THIS IS NOT A MONUMENT.
THIS IS NOT EQUITY.
THIS IS NOT ORIGINAL.
THIS IS NOT AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
THIS IS NOT UNDONE.
SEARCHER
Public Light Meditation Commemorating Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and Juneteenth at the John
Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation, Tulsa, OK
Searchlight, Generator
Dimensions Variable, Towards the Moon
2016, 2017 in Tulsa, and 2019 in Den Haag, Netherlands
Historically, searchlights were used in war to signal allies or enemies by creating 'artificial moonlight.' Subverting this function, Crystal Z Campbell initially conceived of Searcher as a public light meditation bridging two historical events: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and Juneteenth. While the experimemntal musician Sun Ra dodged military service, he often ruminated on reaching a utopia guided by light, be it a North Star, sun, or another branch of the cosmos. In this installation, light functions like a portal through both space and time. Searcher considers the role of light as a defense tactic, ephemeral monument, portal, and replica of one of our greatest sources of light: the moon.