Strategic Communications Group
30 minute documentary, as well as variable length videos, images and writing / 2019
Documentary written and directed in collaboration with Anne Lukins, project made in collaboration with Maya Bush, Lauren Fueyo, Kris Rumman, Anna Sweeney, and four anonymous artists.
Strategic Communications Group was an imaginary corporation, whose goal was to study effective corporate communication strategies on behalf of Temple University. We staged experimental interviews with residents, professors, students, and activists referencing tools from Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed.
Over the course of the project, many conflicts erupted within our group. As per the concept of parallel process, in which large scale social dynamics are mirrored in smaller subsystems, we studied the dynamics present in our group as a vehicle for understanding the relationship between ourselves, the University, and the neighborhood. The documentary tells the story of the collapse of our collaboration, understood as impacted by our shame and guilt as parties to the systemic oppression of the historically black communities of North Philly by Temple University.
Project support provided by the Velocity Fund, administered by Temple Contemporary with generous funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.