return @ Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2021

Verse meets visuals in motion at Cadence: Video Poetry Festival, presented by Northwest Film Forum, programmed in collaboration with Seattle author Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and media maker Rana San. Cadence approaches video poetry as a literary genre presented as visual media, cultivating new meaning from the combination of text and moving image.

Entering its fourth year, Cadence 2021 features 60 artist teams from throughout the world, including my collaboration with artist Raluca Popa, the videopoem return.

return is a lyrical meditation on the Anthropocene that mingles the intimate and the eternal, the biological and the inanimate, the domestic with a sense of deep time, as it seeks to envision transcendence. The abstract drawings originate from Raluca Popa’s ongoing preoccupation with Richard Tuttle’s work.

“The strength and volume of submissions to Cadence this year proves that video poetry is not the niche or inaccessible art form it is often framed as,” says Cadence Co-Director Chelsea Werner-Jatzke. “The broad representation of countries, races, and ages featured in the 2021 program makes this one of the most refreshing and relevant in the four years of the festival’s life. ”

return is part of the This Is How I Excavate showcase asking how far down do we have to dig before we hit bedrock? What happens if, somewhere between the crust and core, we encounter ourselves?