God Bless the Child | Microscope Gallery
At this multimedia event in collaboration with Microscope Gallery and UnionDocs, Fordham students taking “Intro to Art and Engagement” showed work in a program together with internationally acclaimed experimental filmmaker Christopher Harris, on March 12, 2024.
The video installation and performance by Fordham students featured interviews, field recordings, and images of historical documents related to the destruction of the San Juan Hill neighborhood and Lincoln Square community in the 1950s.
The performance was followed by a presentation of God Bless the Child, Christopher Harris’s first autobiographical work.
In God Bless the Child, Harris draws directly from his experience as a foster child. Combining photos, records, and other materials from his personal archives with 16mm film footage he recently shot in Senegal, Harris situates “the carcerality of the social welfare state and child services in relation to Black childhood in the U.S.” within the broader context of the transatlantic slave trade and the French Catholic Church’s colonization of West Africa and the Americas. His hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, is presented alongside Saint-Louis, Senegal, as fraternal colonized twin cities.
The presentation was followed by an open conversation and Q&A with the audience.
The day before, Christopher Harris had lectured on abolitionist filmmaking for various classes taught by Alvarez, as well as Fadi Skeiker’s, THEA 4050 Arts, Social Justice, and Human Rights: Foundations:
These programs were supported by a Fordham University Faculty Challenge Grant and an Interdisciplinary Research Grant.
