phantom. menace. 2023

0h 3min Director: Sondra Perry

This video was initially part of a sculptural installation, comprised of a barbershop station extracted from Perry’s Newark studio (a former salon) — shelves, mirror and all. In the video, the artist crosses the screen in a shot that reflects where the viewer would have stood in the original installation space at Bridget Donahue Gallery on 99 Bowery. A house re-mix amps up, the mirror-image melts and morphs into an AI montage. The prompts for DALL-E and RunwayML were actual exhibition views as well as the statement “two African American men, one in his 50s and one in his late 20s, stand in the middle of a crowded barber shop and shake hands.” The flood comes and DJ "drops" announce a rapid sequence of this fated meeting. This event may or may not have happened. Don’t you know, don’t, don’t, don’t …. We don’t know. AI is useful here: to conjure an image that Perry cannot do on her own.