POPULIST PASTORAL (IN SMOKE) @ VENTI

I am really pleased that my collaborative film with the Tanzanian filmmaker/photographer Nicholas Calvin Mwakatobe, “Populist Pastoral (In Smoke),” made at Civitella Ranieri in September 2019, has been published at the fascinating journal Venti: Air, Experience, Aesthetics. This project is extremely dear to me as it represents a cherished time in residence with wonderful brilliant strangers who quickly became friends (just before lockdown made such rendezvous impossible), and was the moment in which I made my first leporello book—a process that has since imploded my practice, both creative and scholarly. Infinite gratitude to Civitella and to Nicholas for the conversations about animate poetry that led to this cherished co-artifact about breath and breathlessness. Who knew shortness of breath—and the terror of neofascist complicities on multiple continents—would soon become so painfully ubiquitously apprehensible. Check out the whole issue—devoted to the theme Inhale/Exhale!

Still from “Populist Pastoral (In Smoke),” 2019