Abigail Child

Known for DirectingNewark, New Jersey, USA

Abigail Child has been at the forefront of experimental writing and media since the 1980s, having completed more than thirty film and video works and installations, and six books. An acknowledged pioneer in montage, Child’s early film work addressed the interplay be- tween sound and image in the context of resh aping narrative tropes, in a manner that prefigured many contemporary and future media concerns. Her major projects include Is This What You Were Born For?: a 9 year, 7-part work; B/Side: a film that negotiates the politics of internal colonialism in New York City; 8 Million: a collaboration with avant-percussionist Ikue Mori that re- defines the “music video”; The Suburban Trilogy: a modular digi-film that prismatically examines a politics of place and identity; and MirrorWorlds: a multi-screen installation that incorporates parts of Child’s “foreign film” series to explore narrative excess. A new film, A Shape of Error, is constructed as an imaginary ‘home movie’ of the life of Mary Shelley. Child has exhibited worldwide, with retrospectives at Anthology Film Archives (NY), the San Francisco Cinematheque, Sala Trevi in Rome, Exis (Korea), and Harvard Cinematheque, and in important showcases such as The Whitney Biennale, the Viennale and MoMA’s Millenium show. Her work is featured at numerous international film festivals, including the New York Film Festival, Rotterdam, Locarno and London Festivals, among others and is in the permanent collections of MOMA, NY, Centre Pompidou, and Arsenal Berlin. Child has received numerous awards and accolades, including the Rome Prize, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Award and the Stan Brakhage Award. Harvard University Cinematheque has created an Abigail Child Collection dedicated to preserving and exhibiting her work. As a teacher at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Child has been instrumental in building an expansive media and film art program; she has influenced a generation of younger artists. Child is also the author of five books of poetry (A Motive for Mayhem, Scatter Matrix and Artificial Memory among them) and a book of critical writings: THIS IS CALLED MOVING: A Critical Poetics of Film from University of Alabama Press (2005).Read more

Movies & web series

B/Side

Prefaces

Origin of the Species

BLUE EDIT

Perils

Mayhem

Mercy

Mutiny

On the Downlow

Fucking Different New York

La Lucha (The Struggle)

Acts and Intermissions

Salomé

Unbound

Elsa merdelamerdelamer

Vis à Vis

A Shape of Error

Surf + Turf

Riding the Tiger: Letters from Capitalist China

(If I Can Sing a Song About) Ligatures

The Party

Mirror World

To and No Fro

Cake + Steak

The Future is Behind You

Subtalk

Dark Dark

Surface Noise

Below the New: A Russian Chronicle

Through the Looking Lass or Snow White

8 Million

Swamp

Both

Covert Action

Radio Adios

Ornamentals

Pacific Far East Line

Peripeteia II

Daylight Test Section

Peripeteia I

Some Exterior Presence

Tar Garden

Game

Except for the People

Cinexpérimentaux 14 : Rencontre avec Abigail Child

The Suburban Trilogy

Is This What You Were Born For?

Precipice