WE ARE IN HELL WHEN WE HURT EACH OTHER: JACOLBY SATTERWHITE
WE ARE IN HELL WHEN WE HURT EACH OTHER: JACOLBY SATTERWHITE at CCS Bard / Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, through February 22., ‘26.
Video still from Jacolby Satterwhite, We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other, 2020; HD color video and 3D animation with sound; Duration: 24:22 min; Edition: 1/5, plus 1 AP; Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY. © Jacolby Satterwhite.
Installation artist and filmmaker Jacolby Satterwhite (b. 1986, South Carolina) is perhaps best known for high-tech, quasi-surrealist films using a combination of live-action, 3-D and CGI animation. He creates fantastical worlds that bear a hint of sci-fi but are very much about the current state of affairs on Planet Earth. On view at the Hessel Museum, his 2020 film We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other, is dedicated to Breonna Taylor, the African-American medical worker who was gunned down in March, 2020 by police who had forcibly entered her home in Louisville, Kentucky. The incident sparked outrage and widespread protests against police brutality concurrent with the Black Lives Matter movement; footage from one such demonstration, in McCarren Park in Brooklyn, appears in Satterwhite’s film.
Video still from Jacolby Satterwhite, We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other, 2020; HD color video and 3D animation with sound; Duration: 24:22 min; Edition: 1/5, plus 1 AP; Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY. © Jacolby Satterwhite.
Part of the museum’s Marieluise Hessel Collection, the 24-minute film, on a continuous loop, can be viewed as a 3-D, Virtual Reality work, or, as it appears here, in a 2-D format projected on a large screen. A colorful, mesmerizing sequence of images and sounds, the film pulsates with an energetic soundtrack created in collaboration with musician Nick Weiss. In elaborately choreographed sequences, dancers in groups and solo—some wearing glittery armorlike costumes—it is difficult to discern which performers were filmed with live-capture techniques and those that are totally CGI. The film imparts a theme of unity and strength of empathy and community, and its tone is upbeat and positive.
This screening of We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other here at this time is intended to bring awareness of the traumatic health challenge that Satterwhite is now facing. A two-time cancer survivor, the artist must now grapple with a new dilemma. Visit the GOFUNDME for more information on his dire situation. —David Ebony