empire state

works in progress

@The Whitney Museum of Art

 

Installation/Costume/Production Design 
Abigail DeVille
Direction/Script/Co-producer
Charlotte Brathwaite
Composition/Sound Design/Performance
Justin Hicks
Additional Music/Performance

Meshell Ndegeocello
Lighting Design by Kent Barrett
Artistic Facilitation: Mo Geiger

Performance: Okwui Okpokwasili and Paul Pryce

 

Empire State Works in Progress promo video 

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Empire State Works in Progress is a series of kinetic sculptures pertaining to current social, environmental and civil rights state of New York in 2017. Using a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a point of direct inspiration, visual cues transport its audience in a flight through space and time into the interior of a black hole collision. The project features the film, Only when it’s dark enough can you see the stars, created in collaboration with and directed by Charlotte Brathwaite. It uncovers two beings caught in a landscape of contrasting violence and beauty where history and future collide calling on the fantastical and the real.