Steve McQueen’s video exhibit at the Whitney takes over the 5th floor, entirely, with floor to ceiling screens on either side of the floor. Immediately, I’m immersed in the work. Through video (scrolling declassified FBI documents) and spoken word (recitation of these documents by a man and a woman), McQueen presents us with the realities of McCarthy era politics. While watching the video, I was attempting to read and take in all the information coming at me, but I felt that it was McQueen’s intention to represent these FBI documents in a way that is harder to grasp, just as McCarthy Xenophobia and communist “takedown” is mind boggling both to understand that it’s a reality of American history, and that people actually believed in the paranoia created by McCarthy.

This is definitely a unique way to approach the Red Scare, by investigating (and presenting) the documents that the FBI collected on Paul Robeson, a person who was accused of being a communist in Hollywood. Upon further reading of the piece, I discovered that it is made for a museum setting, it’s not meant to be watched through to completion in a theater like setting. I think the way the floor was set up spoke to that, as the immediate immersion in an FBI “investigation” could be quite unsettling, however, you’re placed in that moment and setting, and you stay until you’ve pieced together what McQueen is trying to convey.

All together, I think that most people going in wouldn’t know much about what they’re about to see when they enter the space and I think that was the intention. First off, the voice overs didn’t seem to me like they were exact readings of what was scrolling on the screen, the info coming at you is juxtaposed with the emptiness of the space. I think it was meant to confuse, I mean I’m generally confused how the Red Scare went from being McCarthy’s made up paranoia, to a large scale career ending, fear instiling, federal investigation of many innocent people who, mostly couldn’t be convicted of actual crimes. All in all, I did enjoy the exhibit, I thought it was a very sensory experience and an interesting representation of a time in US history.