An Ecstatic Experience
An Ecstatic Experience (A meditative invocation on transcendence as a means of restoration) is an intuitive and emotional visual narrative, using scenes of protest and unrest to visualise social injustice. The video features material from the Black History Files, including harp recordings by jazz musician Alice Coltrane and a theatre monologue performed on film by the actress and civil rights activist Ruby Dee. Dee voices a powerful testimony by a woman born into slavery in 1849, who recounts her mother praying ecstatically for slavery to end. Gary has scratched into the individual celluloid frames by hand, heightening the imagery’s raw emotional charge. She also includes footage from an interview with a former member of the Black Liberation Army and violent scenes from the Black Lives Matter protests in Baltimore.
These scenes of unrest are mixed with a badly damaged old recording of a gospel group singing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ (Glory, glory hallelujah!). The degraded archival footage, further altered by Gary, set against intense BLM protests deepens the narrative of a fractured society and the ongoing painful history of Black life in America.