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Kat Anderson: Restraint Restrained

17 September 2020

Run Time

96 mins

The word “episode” has dual references. It is derived from the ancient Greek word for the material between two songs in a Greek tragedy, and in contemporary visual culture it refers to a narrative unit within a larger dramatic work, as well as being a term used by mental health professionals to refer to a period of unstable mental illness. Kat Anderson’s ongoing artistic and research framework Episodes of Horror draws on both references. Her work challenges racialised depictions and projections of visual culture onto Black subjects and their wider implications on the lives of Black people. It also draws on the experiences of Black people with mental illness at the hands of police or mental health professionals. Anderson’s practice centres the accounts of Black people and has its focus on Black liberation.

Restraint Restrained was originally exhibited at Block 336 following her residency at the Black Cultural Archives. In the video work John, which makes up one part of Restraint Restrained and was originally exhibited as a two-channel installation, the mechanisms and genre codes of horror cinema are re-claimed as social investigation. Familiar cinematic tropes are utilised by the artist to make highly visible the insidious and systematic horror of racism. Anderson’s work confronts how racism manifests in the white imagination, as well as its direct outcome of severe violence in both the mental health system and policing.

Anderson’s work is interested in re-claiming the cinematic language of horror films—the cinematic imaginary, alongside its shortcomings, holds the potential for escape, visual pleasure and creative freedom—but, equally, her work is deeply engaged with the “non-fictional” (if such a binary can be applied to her work) spaces of community, activism and anti-racist work across spheres of everyday life. The ways in which her artistic practice is interwoven with a commitment to activism is demonstrated across her work, and here in particular in the film Roundtable Conversation. As Rabz Lansiquot succinctly writes in their accompanying essay to the films, “this piece gives voice to those doing the work.”

The mechanisms of film and fictional storytelling are one approach to a close and re-positioned perspective on violence. But alongside cinematic, literary and poetic references, Anderson’s work is also a close listening to the accounts and experiences of Black people dealing with mental health issues, those who have lost loved ones, and those working professionally and in their communities against the many guises of racism.

The moving-image works of Restraint Restrained, presented here at BFMAF, point to Kat Anderson’s ongoing artistic dedication to engaged dialogue on Black liberation, a conversation that continues after the cameras have stopped rolling. —Christina Demetriou

John

John tells the story of a young male, a psychiatric hospital patient who witnesses the death of another Black male patient at the hands of white staff. Blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, this work draws from real life cases of Black mentally ill men who have died as a result of excessive force of the State.

Director

Country

Year

2019

Premiere

Dialogue Language

English

Primary Contact

Kat Anderson

Duration

30 mins

Roundtable Conversation

In Roundtable Conversation, Anderson brings together family members of Black men who have died in police custody or psychiatric units; mental health and legal professionals; activists and artists who reflect on violence as it relates to institutional racism. Through their discussion, the people gathered round the table communicate what needs to be done in order to free the Black mind.

Director

Country

Year

2019

Premiere

Dialogue Language

English

Primary Contact

Kat Anderson

Duration

66 mins