Fri 1/28 @ 6PM
When area artist Megan Young was awarded an Akron Soul Train residency — short-term awards to develop a particular project — she embedded herself in the Northeast Ohio shelter system to learn more about how the people there live and what their issues, needs and desires are. From that she focused on coming up with ideas for temporary housing that addressed safety and dignity, with a series of workshops looking at “public spaces, personal privacy and our relationship to tools of mass surveillance.”
She’s now produced an experimental film called Sign Stealing, based on these inquiries. It will screen at the Myers School of Art Auditorium in Akron on Friday January 28. The screening is free.
She says that the film, which combines footage from community workshops, creative writing, a vocal performance by Ephraim Nehemiah, and “algorithmic iconography,” “compares communal, care-based methods of surveillance to contemporary, technology-based systems, and “asks if we can re-tool emerging technologies to better serve our most vulnerable populations.” She adds, hopefully, “In combining kinesthetic exploration and political activism, it reflects visions for a free and limitless future.
There’s more information about the project at signstealing.org.