Spring 2022 Final Reviews | Christie Neptune

Christie Neptune, Ah New Riddim-Performance III (Constructs and Context Relativity), 2022. Single-channel HD video and super 8mm transfer, TRT 10:15mins
Christie Neptune, Ah New Riddim-Performance III (Constructs and Context Relativity), 2022. Single-channel HD video and super 8mm transfer, TRT 10:15mins

Christie Neptune, Class of 2023

Ah New Riddim-Performance III (Constructs and Context Relativity), 2022
Single-channel HD video and super 8mm transfer, TRT 10:15mins 

Ah New Riddim (Constructs and Context Relativity-Performance III) is a single channel experimental film that examines the spatial-temporal relations of memory and place embedded within a dancehall house party from 1988. The film, an ongoing study towards my thesis, considers the implications of the archive. How do hyper-visible and invisible narratives imbued within the archives shape one’s understanding of the urban? The 1988 Dancehall house party is a visual artifact of material culture, the Caribbean diasporic experience articulated in liminal space. Through archival footage, contemporary tracking shots of the urban, my subjects’ lived experiences, sound, and creative interventions, I evoke a sensorial vernacular landscape of East Flatbush during the 1980s and present.

Christie Neptune is an interdisciplinary artist working across video, photography, sculpture, and performance arts. Neptune investigates how constructs of race, gender, and class limit the personal experiences of historically marginalized bodies of color. Neptune has a BA in Visual Arts from Fordham University. Her films and photography have been included in shows at Gagosian New York (2021); Bass Museum (2019); The University of Massachusetts, Boston (2018); Rubber Factory (2017); A.I.R. Gallery (2016); and Rutgers University (2015). Her work has been featured in publications including ArtForum, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, and The Washington Post. Neptune has been awarded the Bronx Museum of the Arts: Artist in Marketplace (AIM), Smack Mellon Studio Residency, NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Arts, and Light Work Artist-in-Residence, among others. Neptune’s work is in the permanent collection of the Worcester Art Museum.

Christie Neptune, Ah New Riddim-Performance III (Constructs and Context Relativity), 2022. Single-channel HD video and super 8mm transfer, TRT 10:15mins
Christie Neptune, Ah New Riddim-Performance III (Constructs and Context Relativity), 2022. Single-channel HD video and super 8mm transfer, TRT 10:15mins
Christie Neptune, Ah New Riddim-Performance III (Constructs and Context Relativity), 2022. Single-channel HD video and super 8mm transfer, TRT 10:15mins
Christie Neptune, Ah New Riddim-Performance III (Constructs and Context Relativity), 2022. Single-channel HD video and super 8mm transfer, TRT 10:15mins

About the ACT Studio:

The ACT Studio serves as a space for participants to develop their independent practices in relation to each other’s work and in the context of the Art, Culture, and Technology program (ACT) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The understanding and interpretation of each of these terms – art, culture, and technology – can vary significantly between each of the 14 participants; through shared readings, intimate conversations in small groups around each participant’s work, the spring 2022 ACT Studio aimed at developing a common language to allow for a fruitful conversation between the diverse practices of its participants.

In April, a study trip was organized to New York City, the first official out-of-campus travel since the beginning of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. During the weekend, the studio participants visited several art galleries and museums; on Sunday the 11th, they were hosted in the morning by Participant Inc.’s founder, Lia Gangitano; in the afternoon, the studio gathered at Bortolami Gallery in Tribeca, where a seminar took place in the gallery’s upstairs with the invited guests: geographer and abolitionist activist professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Dia Art Foundation curator Jordan Carter.

The trip culminated on Monday, April 12th, with a full-day visit to the Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as it’s Kept, in which the instructor Renée Green’s work is included. after visiting the overall exhibition, the act studio engaged in an extended and intimate conversation with the biennial curators, Adrienne Edwards and David Breslin.

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