Artistic history: The Harun Farocki Institute celebrates American Artist-in-Residence Cathy Lee Crane

“What is a poetic cinema? That’s a question I’ve been thinking about, a question yet to be answered. It can’t just be that it’s not linear. It has to propose a different kind of language and a different kind of thought. And as a result, logic,” offered the American artist and educator Cathy Lee Crane when I recently caught up with her from several time zones away to learn what she’s been up to since we last spoke in 2018 about The Manhattan Front (her debut narrative feature inspired by a bizarre true tale involving a WWI German saboteur, ACLU founding member Elisabeth Gurley Flynn, and the Industrial Workers of the World). The self-proclaimed “decidedly nonlinear filmmaker” also happens to be a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow whose over two decades of work, much of which melds archival footage with staged material, was presented back in 2015 as part of the American Original Now series at the National Gallery of Art. And the multimedia vet’s award-winning films (including the intriguingly titled “experimental biographies” Pasolini’s Last Words and Unoccupied Zone: The Impossible Life of Simone Weil) have likewise played far and wide overseas; from the BFI to the Viennale, to the Festival du Nouveau Cinema and the Cinematheque Francais, and the Arsenal Cinema in Berlin. Which is where Crane is now ensconced, having become the latest recipient of the (Goethe-Institut sponsored) Harun Farocki Residency.

To read part two of my interview with the philosophical multihyphenate visit Global Comment.