Tuesday, October 1, 7pm
Struts Gallery | Free
Join Open Studio Artist in Residence, Kriss Li for a screening of two of their short films, followed by an artist talk about their practice and the research on the federal women’s prison system – especially Nova Institution for Women in Truro – that Kriss has begun at Struts.
Kriss Li is a multimedia artist who creates films, installations, and conceptual projects that explore structures of power. These works investigate the foundational divisions and hierarchies that maintain our social order—the ways these systems condition us in spite of our intentions, and the hidden sites of possibility that we can exploit towards greater collective capacities. Kriss’s artistic practice is informed by extensive engagement with community organizing, especially at Prisoner Correspondence Project, a volunteer-run solidarity initiative for LGBTQ prisoners where they’ve been a collective member since 2009.
FIRST MONTHS OF FREEDOM, Kriss Li, Digital video, 9:17 (2021)
Cat, a transgender woman in Tennessee who has been institutionalized since she was four years old, got off parole in 2020. This film documents her first months of freedom. The piece was composed from phone videos she sent me, Skype calls, archival material, and some footage that a friend had shot a few years before. Cat shares stories from her childhood and her life inside men’s prisons, including her relationship with her husband and former cellmate Doc who remains incarcerated.
ABOLITION FILM SOCIETY: FLIPBOOK CINEMA, Amber Kim and Kriss Li, Two-channel digital video, 6:25 (2022)
Abolition Film Society: Flipbook Cinema is a collaboration with Amber Kim, an activist and author incarcerated in Washington State and inside member of Prisoner Correspondence Project.
Amber and I engaged in a six-month reading group by phone and Jpay, a for-profit online communication system for prisoners. We then collaboratively conceptualized a script based on our readings and discussions, which I used to produced a two-channel short film.
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