Description
This is a stained glass window is a single channel video installation that reflects on the working history of Barbara Cleveland. The work enquires into the collective’s 15-year shared intellectual and creative pursuit, positioning their friendship, artistic labour and collaboration as a ‘stained glass window’.
Directed by the collective, with original score by Corin Ileto, the new video work is inspired by the description of the friendship between two authors, political theorist Hannah Arendt and novelist Mary McCarthy who describe their friendship as a ‘thinking business for and with each other’.
Through a self-reflexive video portrait, which draws on the aesthetics and conventions of cinéma vérité, This is a stained glass window is a tracing of their unique working model and their imbricated lives. Exposing their working method in a film studio, the video is an intimate portrait of the collective that purposefully considers how Barbara Cleveland's specific 'thinking business' can offer an alternative support structure for and with each other.