Baltimore

In ‘Baltimore’, Isaac Julien elaborates further on the theme of ‘Blaxploitation’ cinema that he examined in the more conventional context of the documentary ‘Baadasssss Cinema’. The single-screen version of Baltimore, with all the vertiginous trompe l’oeil split-screen effects intact, is showing in the festival as well. ‘Blaxploitation’ figures here both as historical echo (the soundtrack resonates to excerpts from the films of the Seventies) and pop-cultural presence (embodied in the shape of pioneer director Melvin Van Peebles), both taking their place in Julien’s own hybrid form of cinema which calls on the past of experimental film in its split-screen effect and indicates the future in its Matrix-like special effects sequences. A knowing mélange of cultural references, ‘Baltimore’ also fuses two different museum spaces: the city’s Great Blacks in Wax Museum and the Walters Art Museum; a further instalment in Julien’s ongoing examination of the cracks and fissures which exposes the ‘popular’ in the ‘high’ arts, the black figure concealed in the white space of the classical museum.Baltimore is part of the exhibition Friendly Fire at TENT.