Architectural Video Projections
In collaboration with Tiffany Carbonneau
Through digital video and projection, community-based research, and public engagement, Tiffany Carbonneau and Susanna Crum created four video projections that engaged the past, present and future of specific sites. Mapped onto the facades of structures with specialized software, these video projections combine digital and analog processes to create moving images that activate the site and facilitate conversations about a place’s social history. By conducting historical investigations, archival research, and journalistic interviews, these works combined found and original digitized motion picture film, imagery, and text to create layered visual narratives that highlight intersections between a space’s past and present, and foster dialogue about its future. - Tiffany Carbonneau and Susanna Crum, 2017
The Shadows We Cast, 2017
Architectural video projection
Ross Art Museum, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH
Supported by the Ross Art Museum, with special thanks to the city of Delaware and Ohio Wesleyan University
An architectural video projection on the facade of the Ross Art Museum, a former US Post Office building, The Shadows We Cast overlays imagery from postcards, letters and home movies from the Delaware and Central Ohio Region. It explores two periods of history when changes in labor practices and infrastructure made travel and leisure more accessible, and explores how these media became instruments for defining and promoting “the American Dream.”
In contrast to private, sealed letters, postcards became efficient, inexpensive, and visual tools of communication at a time of mass migration, immigration, and urban development in the late 19th century. As the American middle class continued to grow in the early and mid 20th century, motion picture film became a means to perform and project American ideals. All media allowed users to document, preserve, and project their experiences in a public and private way, transforming personal experience, landscape, and travel into cultural commodities.
At the crossroads of town and campus, the building that now is the Ross Art Museum has long been a meeting point between student and local residents, and the creative process for The Shadows We Cast similarly reflects this connection. The artists worked closely with students and historians at the archives of Delaware County Historical Society and Ohio Wesleyan University to create a visual narrative that highlights intersections between the site’s past and present, and fosters dialogue about its future.
A Place in Time, 2016
Architectural video projection
IN Light IN Festival, Indianapolis, IN
Supported by Central Indiana Community Foundation and the Efroymson Family Fund, Indianapolis, IN
In August 2016, Bethel A.M.E., Indianapolis’ oldest African American church and vital social support structure from the Civil War onward, packed up more than a century of history and move to a new location, making way for a commercial enterprise that would replace, rather than repair, much of its historic architecture. For their collaborative work, artists Tiffany Carbonneau and Susanna Crum conducted research in Indianapolis and worked closely with church historian Olivia McGee-Lockhart to create a video that celebrates the people of Bethel A.M.E. and their impact on the city's social landscape. A Place in Time illuminated the outer walls of the church with a site-specific projection that combined archival, found, and interview-based imagery to explore the complexity of influences that led to the current state of the building and congregation, highlighted the historic architecture that would soon be lost, and celebrated the significant roles of the 147 year-old church within local and national history.
A Running Loop, 2016
Architectural video projection
Churchill Downs Opening Night
Supported by The Louisville Fund for the Arts
From 1875 to 1902, twelve Black jockeys won sixteen Kentucky Derbies, becoming some of the first great American athletes. Carbonneau and Crum’s architectural video projection, A Running Loop, illuminated a façade of the original grandstand with the faces and names of the jockeys, along with historical footage that highlights the divisions between labor and spectatorship that presaged the exclusion and subsequent decline of African American jockeys after 1902.
Inside and Outside, 2016
Architectural video projection
1619 Center for Art and Activism / B-Kind Festival
Supported by 1619 Center and B-Kind Festival
From rivers to interstates, the ways we navigate cities support environmental, social, and economic growth. Highway exits, shipping ports, and boulevards provide the circulatory system for a city’s resources. Which areas are served, and which are excluded, has long-lasting consequences on the vitality of communities. Inside and Outside presented a narrative in which past and present policies, and the maps and ephemera that represent them, overlap and intersect, proposing that we, as fellow Louisvillians, have more conversations about how urban planning, housing legislation, and infrastructure projects can best serve and benefit the many diverse communities that make our city the best it can be.