Puerto Rican video artist Jezabeth Roca González in a film festival at The Front, New Orleans




The Front's fourth annual open call film festival ‘Fertile Ground’ revolves around the theme "Cultivation" and includes both short videos and video installations. When our environment is toxic, what do we do to amend our conditions and improve our circumstances? The idiom, “Growth takes work,” can be applied to many areas of our lives and our societies. These films approach this idea, whether it be through growing a garden, fostering relationships, engaging in our communities, taking political action, or more abstract interpretations.

Work by James Bassett, Muffin Bernstein, Ruben Castillo, Federico Cuatlacuatl, Sarah Fox, Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez, Margaret Hull, Adam Mathieu, Anna Mortimer, Libbi Ponce, Margaret Rorison, Dan Rule, and Katie Spragg.

jezabethroca González - Una Colección de Himnos sin Sonido (A Collection of Hymns without sound)

"Nothing Special Elements of Being" and "Fabrication of Self" (FOS) are videos part of a in progress Installation, inspired and inform by hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico my homeland. Quotidian Rhythms performed in a contact choreographic form. The videos focus on co-dependency. The realization of human need of others. The notion of relationships within mimicry one body is in movement with the push of another body and nostalgic need for my homeland. The works were made after a few months of dead end, limited contact to my family in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria and keep changing with the traumatic developments post hurricane life.


My work focuses on the impact on Latinx identity within American culture– and the discord created by the two. I am interested in migration patterns between Americans and Latinx and how its flux contributes to broader cultural ramification. I want to study physical and psychological transitions that are being developed by our forms of cultural preservation. I explore these themes with the use of playful gestures, bodies, sound and collaborative performances that display struggle, force and intimacy to uncover the lasting effects of sociological impact created by thought of idealization of cultural relationships. With the use video and photography I attempt to reconstruct and rebuild a forced interruption due to distance.

Juried by Kevin Baer, Vanessa Centeno, Nurhan Gokturk, Robyn LeRoy-Evans, Cristina Molina, and Ryn Wilson.

The Front fourth annual film fest, ‘Fertile Ground’ will be on display through August 5, 2018 at The Front is located 4100 St. Claude Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana 70117. Hours: Saturdays & Sundays, 12-5pm (except opening Saturdays)

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