Art Jones
I work with film and video, photography, sound, and objects. I often use music, field recordings, text, live action and animation to produce hybrid documents (with narrative suggestions).
‘First Contact’ is an installation and media performance-in-progess. The basis of the piece is the correspondence from the period of 1759 to 1769 between Medford, Massachusetts slave trader Timothy Fitch and the captains who sailed his ships. These letters are a mode for examination of the irrevocable point of contact where bodies meet- the intersection of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, and also the meeting of British settlers and the Africans whose contact, collision, and conflict will eventually produce the ‘Americans’.
During the 2019 WoW/UNY residency I will produce video, sound, photographs, and objects relating to these historical points of contact and the ripples that affect our present moments.