Wednesday, February 28, 2018 - 12:00pm
Room 202, Frick Fine Arts Building
"Steelworker with a Movie Camera: Working Class Media in an Era of US Deindustrialization"
Image details: Women of Steel, produced by Steffi Domike, Beth Destler, Allyn Stewart and Linny Sovall, 1985, 28 min. Video.
How did U.S. deindustrialization affect the wider popular visual culture? What sorts of artistic response arose in the wake of rising unemployment, community unrest, and the demolition of historic mills? How was time-based media used to visualize forms of crisis and the struggles of ordinary people?
My paper explores these questions by considering several films made by former steel workers turned filmmakers—Tony Buba, Sweet Sal; Steffi Domike, Women of Steel; and Ross Nugent, Steel Mill Rolling. I argue that the 1970s and 1980s saw the rise of filmmakers creating sentimental portraits, focused on blue-collar families and familial dynamics after the mills closed. I conclude that working-class media from this era is characterized by practices of memory-making and familial looking, as strategies to memorialize and preserve a life-world devastated by neoliberalism.
Note: This paper is a rehearsal of a 15-min presentation I am giving at the Middle Atlantic Symposium, National Gallery of Art, on March 3rd. Your feedback is very much appreciated.