Official Selection

United States of America 2022
Duration: 02:19
Directed by: Meredith Drum
Screenplay: Meredith Drum
Animation: Meredith Drum
Technique: Meredith Drum
Music: Andrea Williams
Dialogue language: English

Séance for Dead Horse Bay is the result of an unbridled mashup of impulses, affinities, and collaborations. First it is a tribute to the non-human ghosts living across New York City’s industrial waterways and specifically references the history of Brooklyn’s Dead Horse Bay. Through the 19th century and into the early 20th, the bay was a dumping ground for bodies from neighboring horse rendering plants that manufactured glue and fertilizer. Second the animation is a tribute to Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion studies from the 1880s and the development of cinema out of the love of horses, money, and the science of vision in relation to the American imaginary of limitless resources. Third it showers love on Shirley Clarke’s Bridges-Go-Round. Forth it is a product of Albena Baeva’s Solidarity Machine, an AI instruction device that builds on Fluxus scores that question received notions of belonging, order and hierarchy. Finally, Séance for Dead Horse Bay is a collaboration with composer Andrea Williams, whose score invites all the witches.

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