still/here by Christopher Harris
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still/here by Christopher Harris

Recently acquired for the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection, Christopher Harris’s 16mm film still/here is a study of the decaying urban landscapes of North St. Louis, where Harris was born and raised. With long, static takes of disregarded spaces, forced into disrepair by generations of redlining, Jim Crow laws, and other forms of systemic racism throughout the United States, the film meditates on the complex, nuanced history of the specific neighborhoods Harris films in; meanwhile it draws formal inspiration from the compositional strategies of musicians such as Miles Davis. 2000, USA, DCP, 60 min.

For this screening at the Walker, Harris will be joined by artist Kahlil Robert Irving, whose current exhibition at the Walker, Archaeology of the Present, uses sculpture to dwell on similar themes of history and memory in the landscape of St. Louis.

Free tickets available at 6 pm from the Main Lobby desk.

Christopher Harris makes speculative documentaries of the unreal. His award-winning 16mm films employ formal and material imprecisions, erasures, disjunctions, breakdowns, and gaps that disturb realist aesthetics and unmake the rationalized time, circumscribed spaces, and policed movements of racial capitalism. His films create Black motion(s) and occupy Black time(s) and Black space(s).

Harris’s work has screened at the Locarno Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Arsenal Berlin, and many other festivals and venues. He was awarded the 2023 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, was the 2020–2021 Radcliffe-Film Study Center Fellow/David and Roberta Logie Fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a 2015 Creative Capital grant awardee. Writings about his work have appeared in numerous books and periodicals, including Film Comment, BOMB magazine, and Film Quarterly.

St. Louis–based artist Kahlil Robert Irving (U.S., b. 1992) creates complex and layered assemblages of images and sculptures composed of replicas of everyday objects. Mainly working in ceramics, Irving critically engages with the history of the medium and challenges constructs around identity and culture in the United States, specifically questioning the historical conditions of unrecognized racism and anti-Blackness.

For information about accessibility, or to request additional accommodations for this program, call 612-375-7564, or email access@walkerart.org.

For more information about accessibility at the Walker, visit our Access page.

Free Thursday Nights are sponsored by

  • Logo: Principal Foundation
  • Major support to preserve, digitize, and present the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection is generously provided by the Bentson Foundation.