Single-channel video installation (transferred from 16mm film), color, sound
11 min 15 sec

The title, A Man Screaming is Not a Dancing Bear, is derived from the 1939 poem, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land), by Martinique-born Aimé Césaire. The English translation of the verse cited reads: “And above all, my body as well as my soul, beware of assuming the sterile attitude of a spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of miseries is not a proscenium, a man screaming is not a dancing bear…”

The artistic duo creates metaphors for political and social issues through alternative interpretations of cultural materials, particularly music and musical instruments. A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear integrates film footage shot by the artists in New Orleans and the Mississippi delta, where hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc in 2005, with the rhythmic drumming of jazz.
 
A Man Screaming is Not a Dancing Bear explores issues of ecological witness-bearing and environmental justice within a framework of the traumatized landscape of post-Katrina New Orleans. The film presents two scenes: firstly the interior of a flooded house in the ‘Lower Ninth Ward’, the historically poor and predominantly African American neighborhood that was entirely destroyed by the failed levee system. The second scene focuses on the wetlands of the lower Mississippi River Delta out of which the city of New Orleans was carved. The film depicts a resident of the Ninth Ward, Isaiah McCormick “playing” a set of window blinds in his house. The percussive rhythms he creates on this home-grown instrument subtly recall the great musical heritage of the Mississippi region, whilst exposing the domestic interior to outdoor light in an inconstant flutter of luminosity, which evokes the sediments and uneven traces of recent historical events.

PAST LOANS

Exhibition: 10th edition of Dharamshala International Film Festival
Institution: DIFF Dharamshala International Film Festival
Venue: Online

Jennifer Allora (born 20 March 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (born 10 January 1971) are a collaborative duo of visual artists who live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They were the United States Representatives for the 2011 Venice Biennale, the 54th International Art Exhibition, in 2011.
Since the beginning of their collaborative career in 1995, Allora & Calzadilla have worked in a variety of media to produce a body of work spanning sculpture, photography, performance art, sound and video.

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