Project description

The animated film “Fragile States”, is set in a digital recreation of the Tallahatchie County Second District Courtroom located in Sumner, Mississippi where the Emmett Till Trial took place. Till was the African-American teenager who was murdered after claims that he had flirted with a white woman.  “Fragile States” is part historical essay, and part theoretical argument that will adopt the forms of courtroom testimony and closing arguments delivered by lawyers and witnesses.  The film explores questions of courtroom testimony, witness intimidation, the right to confrontation, ‘don't snitch’ campaigns and the ways in which the reverberations of Emmett Till’s murder have been mediated into the present.

In this work my focus is on Till's uncle, Moses Wright, the prosecution’s main witness in the trial where an all-white jury acquitted Till’s killers.

Today individuals and whole communities are intimidated against testifying by gangs and governments, and in his day an attempt was made by a whole community to intimidate Moses Wright away from testifying. Nations across the world have adopted specific legal protections for journalistic sources, while the United States government claims, there are no such constitutional protections.  Moses Wright gesture of pointing out the accused was all about confronting those who brutalized his family, looking them in the eye and saying I see you and I am not afraid of you.   “Fragile States”,  will explore the complicated issues surrounding Moses Wrights gesture and how this gesture reflects contemporary issues. One central paradox that the work will focus on is the incompatibility of the right to confrontation with the concept of anonymous testimonies. The project will explore the fragile nature of the state, focusing on the places where the fabric of society is tested and where it fails, paying close attention to how the state responds and at times, repairs the tears in an effort to hold itself together.

Taking a different route on historical investigation I will not be dramatically recreating events from the past for the camera, but will instead create through animation the remediation of historical documentaries, what you will see in the trailer are the parts of those media objects that will serve as the basis for this animated remediation, the animation will then be tagged with their origins as a form of citation.

The video on this page is a trailer of sorts for what can best be described as a video script ( rather than a written paper script ) for the final animated film. This video script is an evolving work in progress and it will serve as a model for the project as it moves through various stages of animation.