Marc Bertel — Iteration I: Everything Is Everythang

+++ The film was shown between 26 May and 25 June 2023 in the INBOX space of the Muhka. +++

Eschewing more traditional and expository documentary approaches that necessitate the unearthing of personal knowledge and experience, the film presents itself as an incomplete and fractured sequence of moving images and audio recordings only loosely held together by the locale, musical interludes and the voices of iconic figures such as James Baldwin, Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael. This fragmented and at times ostensibly aimless audio-visual rumination allows for the notions of indeterminacy and opacity to be understood as artistic methods enabling privacy and protection. On screen, Marc’s family, close friends and acquaintances are not subjugated to an analytical or mediating gaze but instead are cast as the main protagonists in a film that could be. The captured vignettes of a shared time and space form the elusive background against which the artist’s and – in extension – the viewer’s own positions, privileges and responsibilities have to be negotiated.

Iteration I: Everything Is Everythang was part of a two-year research project conducted by Marc Bertel with the support of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Being a family member, friend, artist and researcher all at once, the project’s aim was to develop creative strategies that enable the reconciliation of the various and at times conflicting roles Marc is taking up within the communities of South Central Los Angeles, and in particular the neighbourhood of Watts. During this two-year period updated iterations of the film that mirror the research’s progress and incorporate new visual and sonic material were being presented.