Aleesa Cohene in Residence

Description:

In Aleesa Cohene’s practice, they produce video installations derived from existing footage. The process involves archiving and cataloguing thousands of film clips, which become the raw material for their video works. Through strategic editing, montage, narration, and musical scoring, these processes shape familiar cultural material into new forms, contexts, characters, and relationships.

While in residence at Western Front, Aleesa Cohene conducted a series of workshops with young artists who assisted them in organizing and indexing footage for a new video project co-commissioned by Western Front, and Gallery 44, Toronto. The workshop included three main activities: a reading and discussion group, a tutorial on viewing and dissecting films in Adobe Premiere, and a series of related working sessions to create components of the new work. Culminating in Cohene’s 2018 touring exhibition I Don’t Get It, the process generated collaborative inquiry into racial subject matter, constructions of identity, and the role of the producer as interpreter, narrator, and intermediary.