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Post-Election Works

Kate Haug
United States, 2019, 17 min.

In English.

Post-Election Works contemplates the present moment through the writings of German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin as an artist recounts her shifting voice and identity during the production of protest ephemera after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. The use of photographs and video culled from the internet mixed with the artist's artwork and personal experience create a fragmented, prismatic history where the individual becomes the witness, the activist and the subject within a new political landscape.

Director's Statement

Post-Election Works is a very personal project for me. It is hard to know oneself when assumptions about your government become upended and irrelevant. When I first conceived of the film, it was much more about Walter Benjamin; I felt a parallel to his experience. He was an intellectual and a chronicler of modern culture, writing about history as a non-linear, unstable form. In his book, "Moscow Diary," Benjamin's journal entries describe the rise of Stalin from a unique vantage point; he was a foreigner, hosted by actors, leftists and academics, privy to their political debates about Stalin and the changing communist party. Twenty-four years later, pursued by Nazis, Benjamin committed suicide. Throughout his lifetime, Benjamin witnessed the rise of Western dictators, continuing his work as a philosopher and critic. The question of how intellectuals and artists function within a context of political turmoil is compelling to me and structures much of this piece.

Category: Documentary.
Themes: Philosophy, Politics, Women.