Cameron Downey, Hymn of Dust, 2018. Image courtesy the artist.
Cameron Downey and Crystal Z CampbellSeptember 21, 7 pmFree
Using degraded VHS and salvaged 35mm film, artists Cameron Downey and Crystal Z Campbell excavate and imagine unsettled histories in North Minneapolis and Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, respectively. Join us for a screening of their films Hymn of Dust and Go-Rilla Means War, followed by a conversation with the artists.
This program kicks off a residency with Cameron Downey at the Walker. Throughout the fall and winter, Downey will explore the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection, examining themes and issues found in Hymn of Dust, such as decay, urban landscape, and performance, as they work toward the creation of a new film. Their residency will culminate in a series of collection playlists, curated by Downey and presented online and in the Bentson Mediatheque.
Free tickets available at 6 pm from the Main Lobby desk.About the Artists
Cameron Downey is an anti-disciplinary artist and environmental scientist born and raised in North Minneapolis. Their work oscillates among photography, film, body, sculpture, curation, and otherwise in order to mediate the concepts and bounds of world-building and survival artistry through Black, fantastical, and precarious spaces and forms. Downey graduated from Columbia University in 2021 with a double concentration in visual art and environmental science. Downey’s art has been exhibited by HAIR+NAILS, Minneapolis; Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin (2021); Engage Projects, Chicago (2021–2022); and as part of Midway Contemporary Art’s Off-Site program (2022).
Crystal Z Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of African American, Filipino, and Chinese descents. Campbell finds complexity in public secrets—fragments of information known by many but untold or unspoken. Sonic, material, and archival traces of the witness inform their work in film/video, performance, installation, sound, painting, and writing. Honors and awards include a 2022 Creative Capital Award, Harvard Radcliffe Film Study Center & David and Roberta Logie Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Award, MAP Fund, MacDowell, MAAA, Skowhegan, Rijksakademie, Whitney ISP, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, and Black Spatial Relics, among others. Select exhibitions and screenings include the Drawing Center, New York; ICA-Philadelphia; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT), Los Angeles; Studio Museum of Harlem; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha; Project Row Houses, Houston; SculptureCenter, New York; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.About the Works
Hymn of Dust by Cameron Downey, Cooper Felien, Izzy Commers, and Miles JamesonSpotlighting a speculative “scene of a crime,” VHS video dimly illuminates adorned youth in North Minneapolis’s sculptural, toxic metal wasteland along the Mississippi River in Downey’s downbeat electronic hymn. 2018, US, VHS to digital, 9 min.
Go-Rilla Means War by Crystal Z CampbellA relic of gentrification, 35mm footage salvaged from a now-demolished civil rights–era theater in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn is the basis for Campbell’s intricately woven parable narrating complexities of Black cultural erasure and restoration. 2017, 35mm film transferred to digital, 20 min.
Memory BoxSeptember 28, 7 pm$12 ($10 Walker members, students, and seniors)Copresented with Mizna’s Twin Cities Arab Film Festival.
“A richly multi-layered exploration of memory . . . a love letter to Beirut.” —VarietyMizna’s 16th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival opens with Memory Box and a post-screening discussion with Lebanese artist duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. On Christmas Eve, Maia and her daughter Alex receive an unexpected delivery of notebooks, tapes, and photos from Maia’s life in 1980s Beirut. Maia refuses to open the box, but Alex secretly dives into her mother’s archive. Alternating between fantasy and reality, Alex enters the world of her mother’s tumultuous, passionate adolescence during the Lebanese Civil War. 2021, France/Lebanon/Canada/Qatar, DCP, in Arabic and French with English subtitles, 102 minutes.
A pre-screening reception will take place at 5:30pm, with drinks and light snacks from Baba’s. Open to all in the audience.About Mizna’s Twin Cities Arab Film Festival
Mizna’s Twin Cities Arab Film FestivalSeptember 28–October 2Mizna’s Arab Film Festival showcases films made by Arab and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) makers. The opening-night film, copresented by Mizna and the Walker, screens at the Walker Cinema. All other festival films will screen at the Trylon Cinema (2820 E. 33rd St, Minneapolis).
For a full schedule and festival pass information, visit mizna.org.
Support for Mizna is provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board, the McKnight Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.About the Artists
Filmmakers and artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige question the fabrication of images and representations, the construction of imaginaries, and the writing of history. Their works create thematic and formal links between photography, video, performance, installation, sculpture, and cinema. Since the 1990s, they have collaboratively directed numerous films that have screened across the world. The artists are known for their long-term, research-based projects that focus on personal or political documents as well as their particular interests in invisible histories, like those of the disappeared during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), the Lebanese space program from the 1960s, and the geological and archaeological foundations of modern cities.
Attendance Requirements
Mask-wearing is mandatory for all attendees.
If you have questions or require additional assistance, please email orders@walkerart.org or call 612-375-7600.