Letter From Chicago
Originally Published in C Magazine, Spring 2003
Threads of Belonging is a feature-length experimental video by Milwaukee-based filmmaker Jennifer Montgomery (director of the famous Art for Teachers of Children, 1995). Montgomery brings together tropes from diverse genres, most notably narrative and essay forms. Threads of Belonging is based on the work of R.D. Laing, a British psychiatrist who founded a therapeutic community in which the hierarchical distinction between physicians and patients was essentially eliminated. Montgomery staged a sort of dramatic re-enactment of Laing's community in Milwaukee, asking fellow artists to live together as therapists and patients for two weeks.
The performers in the piece do not function clearly as characters (who we associate with the novel, the play, and narrative cinema, and with whom we expect to identify); nor do they function clearly as subjects (who are associated with science and anthropology, and for whom we expect to feel only curiosity). Rather, they are balanced precariously between the two positions. This melding of generic properties creates an emotional equivocation that causes the viewer to consider Montgomery's intention (and, more broadly, her subjectivity).
What comes across is Montgomery's serious engagement with questions of a moral nature. In her recent presentation at the Gene Siskel Center as part of the “Conversations at the Edge” series, Montgomery spoke about her interest in the Social Guidance Film (a genre of films made to teach children about ethics and safety, typically shown in schools in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Reefer Madness and Duck and Cover are Social Guidance Films), and that interest manifests itself in this work. The movie uses the conventions of character and conflict to lay out big, complicated questions about power dynamics and suffering and the Enlightenment project of taxonomizing everything, including kinds of consciousness.
There are problems with the piece. It looks like a video work by a filmmaker. It uses cinematic language (shot/reverse-shot, establishing-shot/interior, etc.) which sets up the expectation that the piece will have the visual richness of film, and it fails to meet that expectation. Sometimes the acting is, well, bad. What really sets the work apart is that, unlike so much contemporary art (and like Social Guidance Film), Threads of Belonging doesn't just gesture obliquely toward interesting “issues” or “themes”. Montgomery has created actual experiences of the theories and dynamics with which she is concerned, both in life, by staging the two-week long, spiritual-retreat style shoot; and in representation, by painstakingly distilling the 80 hours of footage to a succinct, emotionally compelling ninety minute feature.