Screening: Kevin Jerome Everson, TEN SHORT FILMS

Everson’s short films continue to challenge traditional distinctions between documentary and fiction by employing narrative devices, artifice and re-enactments of historical events, to create timely observations on race and the socio-economic conditions of contemporary and historical African American life.

Taking the current exhibition of Everson’s feature length Tonsler Park as a starting point, Index presents an evening of short films by the American artist and filmmaker, with focus on his various representations of labour and civil rights. Through Everson’s characteristically quiet and unobtrusive filmic language, we get to follow the changing patterns of formal and informal, physical and intellectual and even spectatorial labour through a selection of ten short films made between 2009 and 2017.

Everson’s work stages lives and everyday processes in ways that render these visible to an audience in new ways and contexts. Lending us the privileged position of being in and amongst his seemingly simple and everyday subjects, his camera is often directed ”at people and activities that might otherwise never be held up to view.” (Erika Balsom, The Reality Based Community), in turn reflecting on deeper divides and issues to do with civil rights and representation.

Kevin Jerome Everson was born in 1965 in Mansfield, Ohio and lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia. Everson’s work includes nine feature length films and over 100 short-form works to date. Recent screenings and exhibitions of Everson’s work include Tate Modern, London (2017), Whitney Biennial, New York (2017), MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2017) and Viennale, Vienna (2014). In 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented More Than That, an exhibition of his short films. He is Professor of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. In February 2018 his work will be the subject of a retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, MA.

Social media: @indexstockholm #kevinjeromeeverson

Full programme:

Workers Leaving the Job Site, United States 2013, 16mm transferred to digital, colour, silent, 6:30

Watchworks, United States 2009, mini-DV, black and white, color, English and German language, sound 4:30

We Demand, Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold, United States 2016, Super-16mm transferred to digital, colour, sound, 10:19

Sound That, United States 2014, 16mm transferred to digital, colour, sound, 11:40

Fe26, United States 2014, 16mm transferred to digital, colour, sound, 7:21

Three Quarters, United States 2015, 16mm transferred to digital, black and white, silent, 4:37

American Motor Company, United States 2010, 16mm transferred to digital, black and white, silent, 12:00

R-15, United States 2017, HD, black and white, sound 5:10

Half On, Half Off, United States 2011, S-8 transferred to digital, color, silent, 3:36

Break

Company Line, United States 2009, 16mm, mini DV and still photographs , black and white, colour, sound, 30:00