Upon my initial encounter with Bouchra Khalili’s video installation at MOMA, I was unimpressed. At first sight, the various screens spread across the gallery floor do not feature particularly compelling visuals. All of the screens appear to be showing a similar if not identical piece of video art. However, this is not the case and I soon realized that each screen featured a very different story and had greater political implications then a traditional piece of video art.

The project was produced between 2008 and 2011 when the artist encountered and documented the stories of illegal migrants making their way into Europe. Khalili’s work showcases a new way of map making, as the migrants draw their paths across borders and oceans a new map results. The paper map can be easily drawn upon; borders can be easily crossed with the migrant’s pen. This is juxtaposed to the hardships faced by the migrants who encounter opposition to their travels at each border they cross. In addition, each video piece features the same paper map with only the migrant’s hand in the frame. This leads to anonymity of the migrant but also brings the viewer closer to the piece, encouraging empathy with the individual’s experience. Khalili uses a similar shot composition for each story, placing the focus purely on the story and evoking a feeling that the migrant’s story is not necessarily unique. Rather, it is a comment on the ubiquitous nature of migrant struggle and the desire for life improvement through crossing of borders. The visual component of the piece gives scale to the journey that migrants take to reach their aspirations. The spread of eight screens across the gallery floor forms a tableau of anonymous stories and shrinks the massive diaspora of migrant stories to a more manageable scale. Through the piece I felt as if I were able to connect with each individual story and while I can never understand the difficulties these individuals faced, Khalili was able to bring me closer to understanding through the artwork.

What I really appreciated about this piece is that it does not explicitly take a side, although the artist’s intentions are clear, ultimately it is up to the viewer to interpret the migrant stories. Even though this may appear to be a politically motivated piece, the emotional and physical struggle of each individual story is the spotlight rather than any particular political objectives. Khalili is not out to prove a point but rather to tell the stories of those who would otherwise go unnoticed.

I attended the Omer Fast exhibition at the James Cohan gallery. The exhibition features three short films by artist, Omer Fast. These three films are entitled 5,000 Feet is the Best (2011), Continuity (2012), and Spring (2016). Each one is professionally produced with competent acting and great cinematography.  During the installation I found myself contemplating whether or not the films should be considered experimental or not.  Ultimately I came to the conclusion that indeed they can be considered experimental art. This is due to the fact that despite possessing a narrative structure, Fast is still conscious of the exhibition space and places an emphasis on evoking feeling as opposed to telling a story.

The first film, 5,000 Feet is the Best, deals with issues of drone surveillance and aims to bring drone warfare closer to home. The film is able to do this especially well by using aerial shots of suburban neighborhoods while overlaying these visuals with audio of drone pilots describing what it is like to observe targets from the sky. The key sequence of this film is an interview between a journalist and a drone pilot, which is used as a vehicle to tell a series of vignettes which are loosely connected to the rest of the film. This interview sequence is repeated throughout the film from differing camera angles, some of which expose the camera crew filming the interview.

The second film, Spring, is displayed across 5 separate screens arranged both vertically and horizontally in order to create one large screen. This arrangement compliments the disappearing images, overlapping scenes, sounds, and shots featured in the film. There is a theme of connected yet disjointed narrative throughout this exhibition and the physical arrangement of the displays compliments this theme.

The third film, Continuity, follows a soldier returning home to his parents. The soldier recounts stories of war for his parents. These stories materialize inside the suburban home through the use of overlapping visuals which appear almost ghostly. Again, Fast uses repetition of scenes, places and lack of a linear story to keep the audience guessing and evoke a feeling of being in an absurd world. The world that Fast creates is visually similar to our own but the circumstances and occurrences that take place in this world evoke a discomfort that makes us aware of the fact that the environments of the films are almost otherworldly.

All three films are played on a loop in separate exhibition spaces. This means that the viewer can start watching each film at any point and the story will still unfold properly with varying emotional impact. This is due to the fact that the same scenes are repeated throughout each film from varying camera angles and the major plot points in each film overlap with one another and are replayed periodically. By arranging these films in a gallery space on a loop, Fast is able to create a piece of slightly absurdist art. The viewer feels as if they are watching a spectacle rather than a narrative film.

Made famous by her 2014 Documentary, Citizenfour, about the notorious Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras puts on her first solo museum exhibition, Astro Noise, at The Whitney Museum of American Art. Taking up the entire 8^th floor of The Whitney, Astro Noise examines themes of surveillance and war, forcing visitors to confront these themes head-on by becoming unwilling participants in the artmaking processes itself. Laura Poitras’ unfamiliarity with the museum space is made clear by the inconclusive nature of the exhibition, which seems to fall short of deserving consideration as art.

The experimental nature of the exhibition seems like a first attempt at a broad topic rather than a full-fledged exhibition on surveillance and war. The interaction between the viewer and the installation seems surface level at best and could have included a greater level of engagement in order to convey the theme of surveillance. The use of a dual video, double sided screen in the center of the room adds to the sense of space, requiring the viewer to walk from the front of the screen to behind the screen in order to see both films. On one side of the display there is footage of individual’s gazing at the ruble of the Twin Towers in the days after September 11^th, on the other side of the display there is footage of suspected terrorists being interrogated. This dichotomy is intriguing yet predictable and does not seem very experimental in its design. The connection between the two videos on either side of the screen is straightforward and does not leave me with any unanswered questions. The second part of the exhibition is a video installation, Bed Down Location, in this installation the viewer is drawn in through the use of a carpeted platform in which visitors lay down and gaze at a video projection on the ceiling. The video features starscapes and footage of distant military drones flying overhead. This section of the installation encourages us to do something we so rarely do: look up. By laying down and looking at the ceiling we obtain a perspective we don’t often see and we are forced to envision ourselves beneath the unknown, under the blanket of drone surveillance. This was the most powerful part of the exhibition and for me it had to do with the fact that I was laying down and looking up, it became just me and the video overhead causing me to forget that I was in a museum.

Astro Noise, does not consider themes of war and surveillance equally, leaving surveillance as somewhat of an afterthought, contributing to the exhibition’s disjointed feeling. What seems to be a visual chronological archive of the war on terror, ends with a thermal imaging live-feed of museumgoers watching the installation video, Bed Down Location, and a monitor that tracks and identifies the mobile devices of people in close proximity. Unlike other politically inspired artworks, Poitras’ message is not clear, Astro Noise does not have a conclusion. The exhibition does not propose a solution to the issues examined, nor does it try to expose or unpack the harsh realities of war or our government’s self-appointed right to track its people.