With Baltimore, Isaac Julien presents a monumental installation made up of three films shot in 16mm and edited as videos, projected on three quite different screens. The triptych form extends the length of the projection over three time-frames which, through narrative breaks and repetitions, make it possible to construct a narrative which refers, by way of many different references, to a past, present and future history of black culture in the United States. On this latter point, Julien actually explains that he was keen to create a “third dimension” using cultural themes borrowed from black science-fiction and Afro-futurism, while being simultaneously inspired by the film trend known as Blaxploitation from the 1970s. By way of introduction to each video, the shot of a drawing of two black silhouettes opening a large book with white pages announces the start of a story which will have as its setting the city of Baltimore seen through its streets and three of its buildings. First the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum, a popular museum displaying wax figures of historic black personalities (politicians, musicians, singers and writers, as well as former slaves and Egyptian queens), then the Walters Art Museum, which houses a major collection of works dating from Antiquity to the present day as well as some very fine Renaissance canvases, and lastly the Peabody Library, which is part of the famous John Hopkins University, the oldest research and educational institution in the United States. Over and above a choice of sets, Isaac Julien, who has a deep interest in the issue of archives, proposes nothing less than a comparison, which is at once imaginary and real, between these places that contain an ancestral memory, giving rise, through this encounter, to an extremely contemporary reading of the history of art and culture. The two characters who recur in all three videos are Melvin Van Peebles, the famous director and actor of the cult film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, the first independent black film which marked the year 1971 by its huge public and critical success, and Vanessa Myrie, who embodies an Afro-Cyborg, with the features of a woman who calls to mind both Angela Davis, political icon and Pam Greer, icon of Blaxploitation. As the bionic eye, she appears throughout the video, in high heels, as if trying to escape from Melvin Van Peebles. In just a few minutes, using quick cuts which follow the soundtrack, in which film extracts including Sweet Sweetback are intercut with views of working class neighbourhoods in Baltimore, Isaac Julien creates all the suspense of a detective film. The special effects, the light with its bluish hues, the expertise of the camera movements, and the shots which follow on one from the other at the pace of the museum rooms crossed, all reinforce this impression but, at the same time, the elements presented contradict the sensation of lightness which might be felt in an action movie. For these wax figures which stake out the movements of Van Peebles and the Afro-Cyborg are often painful reminders of an Afro-American history hallmarked by slavery, violence and racial discrimination. Accordingly, the wax slave figures are shown on the screen of the first video just when we hear a shot fired, and when the actress takes off her wig and reveals her shaven head. While the voice of a black leader rings out, Van Peebles contemplates a metaphysical “Ideal City” painted by an anonymous 15th-century Italian artist, the camera follows one of the ruined amphitheatres in the painting. The next shot dwells for a long time on Martin Luther King, and then shows the sad face of Billie Holiday. In the second and third videos, the scenes seem to be repeated, but we find new historical figures such as Malcolm X, W.E.B. Dubois, leaders of the Nation of Islam, and demonstrators in the Civil Rights Movement bearing “Freedom” placards. Shifted into the picture gallery, they become at once actors in their own history and spectators of another history in which they did not really play any part. Isaac Julien films them as witnesses of a genealogical experience. He also creates the encounter between Melvin Van Peebles and his double by making a chronological short cut which does away with any nostalgia. While in most instances the wax figures are frozen in their timeless quality as popular icons, by creating a wax Van Peebles for his video, Isaac Julien wittily suggests an active memory between the famous director and his character, and through this contrast keeps the story in the present. The meeting occurs in a museum, and the flesh-and-blood Melvin looks at his wax alter ego as if he were seeing himself in a mirror. The new spatial dimension created between model and effigy henceforth offers a reading which projects all the historical figures of African-American culture into a political reality which is still valid today. Having become visitors at the Walters Art Museum, which lays claim to 55 centuries of European and Asian civilization stretching from the ancient world to the 20th century, Isaac Julien gives them the part of ferrymen between two parallel histories, between a popular culture and an erudite culture, and creates a novel comparison which capsizes the linearity of Western history. When the video Baltimore is on the point of ending, we see Melvin Van Peebles from behind walking in the street amidst the sound of sirens, and with a final shot of skyscrapers, we hear a voice which winds the video up: “The party is over, baby, it's reality!”

Elvan Zabunyan

Translated by Simon Pleasance