This time around I went back to MoMA to watch a film by Robert Greene called Procession, a documentary film filled with cinema drama therapy that takes a different approach for a healing process of six adult survivors of child sex abuse in the Catholic church. The opening of the film was unlike anything I’ve ever seen, it had the re-enactment of one of the survivor’s stories but more than that it used CGI to alter the reality and give it a more symbolic meaning. I’ve watched many documentaries over the years, and Greene gave it such an experimental touch that it doesn’t feel like I was watching one at all. Firstly, the involvement of the survivors themselves taken control of the film and being the ones to narrate it all as well as being the ones to play acting roles on their own traumatic scene felt unique.

The topic of child molestation and rape inside the Catholic church is criticized in the media but worst of all, the Catholic church has been known for protecting its members. I felt immersed with the film from the beginning because I also come from a family that practices Catholicism, was baptized as a baby, did my first communion, and went to Sunday church with my family. As a child we’re made to follow the religion of our parents and as one of the survivor’s said, “the Church holds power on us the moment we’re baptized”, there’s something almost wrong about how true his words are and how the Church continues to be corrupted to this day. I’m not a religious person anymore but this film didn’t badmouth religion or for that matter none of the survivors were anti-religious instead they focused on the people itself.

Usually, while watching a documentary there’s this strategized almost beginning like timeline of the events that happened following up with interviews of the people involved and fictional scenes to recreate the event with different actors. But there wasn’t anything like that in the film instead the stories of the survivors were told as they talked casually and while writing and reviewing their scenes with one another. It felt almost too personal for a documentary, the men had control over their scenes, and they played the role of the perpetrators too. Drama therapy was something I’ve never heard of especially being shown in a documentary film, the approach that Greene took made the topic even more raw.  

The film although shown as a documentary didn’t feel like it was one fully because of the behind the scenes being shown in its reality. It was more of a nonfiction film about healing and that’s what Greene is known for as a filmmaker of modern nonfiction cinema. The ending as well was one of the survivor’s reading a letter to his younger self (the child actor) where he writes how he will move on and that it wasn’t his fault. It all ties together with what they want the film to mean for them and the future and to all the other young boys who share the same story as them. All six men knew the documentary film would either be received good or bad but what mattered most was to get their story out. Greene’s used experimental directing and filming to give the survivors a chance to heal on their own film.

Yoselin Castelan Ramirez

Shigeko Kubota’s, Liquid Reality Exhibition, is an immersive viewing of videos using sculptures, essentially destroying the constraints of viewing them through a TV box. Kubota being among the first-generation artists to embrace video, uses different filming techniques and editing to distort how videos should be viewed and how they can corporate nature, technology, and time. While visiting the exhibition, the light room had works of plywood and sheet metal all taking on a structural form of what the videos constituted.  Three Mountains, for example, was footage from three different terrains shot by a moving car but installed inside a mountain (pyramid-like) structure and with distorted mirrors and angles. This work along with Duchampiana: Nude Descending a Staircase, utilizes structures to present distorted video footage but this alone combines the creative aspect of having a stand still structure play moving film that evokes time stopping for the person viewing the work. Interestingly, I was more surprised by her first work Berlin Diary: Thanks to My Ancestors, just the use of having handwritten kanji tied on top of the small television with its static background truly invokes the idea that viewing video can be transformed into a creative artistic element.

            While the light room exhibition was thoughtful and truly showed the origins of what Kubota portrays, the dark room opposite to it with its similar techniques personally leaves viewers more transfixed. Using mirrors and flowing water creates a stronger aesthetic along with the low illuminated room making the water’s light reflect on the walls and floor. This side of the exhibition had three works starting from the Video Haiku-Hanging Piece which creates a visual representation of a poem from a hanging pendulum ball where the video is reflected from the ball to the mirror on the ground. Only viewers who are present at the time can view the video on the mirror being stretched by the swinging ball. River and Niagara Falls are similar because they depend on the use of water flowing and the videos being mirrored by the water for us to view the video, looking at the flow of the water as it moves in time. Here again we see the relationship of a structure and its video viewing, how both overlay one another to trap us into a fall-sense of moving with the video but standing still through it.

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            Unfortunately, the dark room was more favorable to the audience at the exhibition rather than the light room and I could understand that most would find the aesthetic structures more intriguing. However, it feels that as we walk through the exhibition starting from the light room to the dark room it connects with one another to showcase the emergence and growth of video visualization in time and creativity using stand-still structures. Sometimes we can find viewing videos to a simple activity and not much work is needed to enjoy what we watch, but when we let go of viewing video constraints, I understand how Shigeko Kubota wanted to create a form of artistic work. While her videos may appear distorted, the simple act of having to be present in time to truly view them being reflected in the structural works and adding nature in her work just makes the footage realistic.

-Yoselin Castelan Ramirez