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Dana LIXENBERG, <Imperial Courts>, 3 channel video, colour, sound, 69min., 2015 Courtesy of the Artist, Grimm and Huis Marseille, Amsterdam
Dana LIXENBERG Imperial Courts
Dana Lixenberg’s <Imperial Courts>(1993-2015) project combines video work and an extensive series of black and white photographs to track how a small community in south-central Los Angeles changes. The photographs and video are creations that resulted from a broad and cooperative relationship she formed with the residents of Imperial Courts, the place she became familiar with while travelling around Los Angeles in the wake of the Rodney King riots in April, 1992. For more than 22 years from 1993 to spring of 2015, Lixenberg created an extensive portrait of the community, and turned her eyes away from the site of destruction to the typical lives of the people who become the center of attention only in the event of a calamity. Works created in Imperial Courts include 393 black and white photographs, a book published by Roma Publications in 2015, and also a 63 minutes long 3 channel video projection that runs on a loop. Life in Imperial Courts captured in Lixenberg’s film forms a wide spectrum, ranging from high drama and play to meaningless daily lives. It contains scenes of ordinary daily lives in urban cities in the USA which were oftentimes mocked as aberrant and extreme. Imperial Courts set against the unchanging background of an urban landscape creates continuity of a community, opposes sensationalism and spectacles, and choses sensitivity above all. Made with such an approach, <Imperial Courts>(1993-2015) recorded the lives of African-Americans and Latin Americans in various ways for 22 years. |
