With each project, the protean artist and filmmaker Christopher Harris challenges himself not only to re-think previously employed aesthetics but to discover new strategies and techniques that will serve to illuminate his complex and nuanced investigations. Working primarily in 16 mm, Harris has manipulated celluloid, employed optical printing, altered film stock, and hand-cranked the motion picture camera, disrupting the images - and meaning - of the representation of Black people whether in the detritus of found footage or well-known works such as the early 20th century white supremacist film, Birth of a Nation.

Imbuing radical forms with radical political and social critique, Harris’ body of work bears witness to the impacts of anti-blackness and to neglected and mis-represented landscapes, stories, and histories. In the service of what has been omitted, censored, mis-represented, ignored, in critiquing power dynamics, in rejecting documentary ‘realism,’ Harris forges a space and asserts an alternate – new - vision of past, present, and future.

photo: Ana Siqueira