This selection of short videos includes four titles by Ulysses Jenkins, whose video Two Zone Transfer is installed in the exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement: 1955-1985. Jenkins’s video and media work is remarkable for its fusion of forms to conjure vibrant expressions of how image, sound and cultural iconography inform representation. 

Program highlights:

Dream City is a companion to a 24-hour group performance organized by Jenkins that collages live music, poetry, and dance into a pulsating kaleidoscope of color and sound. It features frequent Jenkins collaborators Maren Hassinger, Senga Nengudi, and David Hammons as well as clips of chess games, punk shows, and images of the Los Angeles skyline, all set to a hypnotic improvisation of saxophone, percussion, and voice (1983, 5 minutes).  

The Video Griots Trilogy:

Self Divination is a short that speaks poetically about origins and the realities of the African Diaspora (1989, 12 minutes).

Mutual Native Duplex is a video essay on the mutual alliances between Native Americans and African Americans. It explores the “neo-American model” of intercultural cooperation that grew out of these encounters (1990, 12 minutes).  

The Nomadics is a sweeping overview of different communities of color from around the world.

Total running time is approximately 45 minutes.

Programmed in conjunction with the exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement: 1955-1985, open from September 21, 2025 to January 4, 2026.

Image caption: Still from Ulysses Jenkins’s Dream City, courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix