James Benning

A view of an Oregon farm field, observing a solar eclipse and incorporating a Leonard Cohen song.

The portrait of an art institution: James Benning explores the building and grounds of the California Institute of Art. Each image creates a tension, a constant urge to move on the next one, as if landscape and space could be the scenes of a crime.

This three-channel video installation by James Benning shows three scenes from David Wark Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The two-minute-long screen arrangement of imperceptibly moving images alludes to the beginning of racism. The three screens each show a solider in the American Civil War, black slaves picking cotton in the field, and imposing KKK.