60 Second Side-Eye//Skate Kitchen (2018)

In her book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman describes the “chorus” as a group of young women whose radical imaginations offer other ways of seeing and experiencing the world. Their gathering together creates space for open rebellion, black radicalism and refusal, collaboration and transformation. This 60 Second Side-Eye uses digital illustration to show Hartman’s “chorus” at work in a scene from the 2018 film Skate Kitchen (Crystal Moselle). As the girls share experiences of sexual assault and gaslighting, they hold space for each other and dream up active modes of resistance.

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60 Second Side-Eye started as an experiment. Well, an experiment and a challenge: what new knowledge or ways of seeing blackness emerge when we concentrate on the intimate, everyday moments of black girl experiences?

Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. For educational purposes.