STORIES I TOLD THE STARS
Video / 20:22 / 2024
Stories I Told the Stars is a short documentary that features the stories of three men who left their homes in Ethiopia in the 1980s to escape civil war.
They share their experiences as refugees and their journey to the United States.
Directed by Fevan Solomon
Produced by Erin Yanke and Outside the Frame
Director of Photography- Makayla Cauldwell
Audio- Alex Pham Wakefield
Edited by Jodi Darby
CARCERAL SALES EVENT
Multi-Channel Video Installation / 2020
Commissioned by SF Camerawork for the exhibition
Cell Signals, Jodi Darby’s multi-screen video-work Carceral Sales Event brings together 1950s commercials, instructional video footage and images of prisons as they are fictitiously depicted in TV and film.
Darby asks viewers to judge the degree to which representation of prison life are abstracted.
- Pete Brook, Curator, Cell Signals
NEO | MYTHOS
Video-mapped projection 2019
NEO | MYTHOS is a collaboration between media artist Jodi Darby and the students of Open School East with projections by Nanda D'Agostino, Sarah Turner and Hilary Tsai.
Using multimedia platforms; video, animation and projection mapping, students examined the concept of mythos and oral histories while challenging tropes and stereotypes to re-create their own mythologies.
While learning videography, audio recording and basic film production techniques, students collaborated to create new worlds of supernatural beings and deities- creating a new lens through which to reclaim identity.
NEO | MYTHOS was generously funded by the Oregon Community Fund and the Juan Young Trust.
CHAVRUTA: A DRUMMER'S BAT MITZVAH
HD Video / 15:00 / 2018
Chavruta: A Drummer's Bat Mitzvah follows drummer/ecologist Lisa Schonberg and musician writer/Torah scholar Alicia Jo Rabins as they trade drum lessons for Torah study.
The project explores ritual, the examination of Goddess culture, the history of women's drumming in the ancient Near East and spiritual leadership and ecology while preparing Lisa for her adult Bat Mitzvah.
CULTURETRAUMA
Assemblage Film / 12:00 / 2017
Culturetrauma is a diary style found footage survey of trauma experienced while growing up in 1970s and 1980s US death culture. All footage appropriated from the Prelinger Archive.
Awarded Best Essay Film at the 43rd Northwest Filmmakers Festival curated by Deborah Stratman
PORTLAND EXPO CENTER-A HIDDEN HISTORY
Video Assemblage / 6:20 / 2016
In 1942, the United States government imprisoned nearly 4,000 Japanese Americans from Oregon and southwest Washington at the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Center, now known as the Portland Expo Center.
This video, commissioned by Oregon Humanities, explores the hidden history of the Expo Center through the stories of the people who were there.
LEILA'S HAIR MUSEUM
HD Video / 10:00 /2016
Short documentary about Leila Cohoon, the owner and operator of Leila's Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri. Leila's Hair Museum is the only hair museum in the world, containing over 600 Victorian hair wreaths and 2,000 pieces of jewelry made of human hair.
LEILA'S HAIR MUSEUM
HD Video / 10:00 /2016
Short documentary about Leila Cohoon, the owner and operator of Leila's Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri. Leila's Hair Museum is the only hair museum in the world, containing over 600 Victorian hair wreaths and 2,000 pieces of jewelry made of human hair.
INTO THE LIGHT
Assemblage video / 3:55 / 2016
Music video for the title track of Marisa Anderson's
Into the Light album.
PATTERNS OF MOVING JOY
Video assemblage / 2015
Assemblage of 1950 and 60's film capturing the drone of mechanical machinery. Commissioned for the 2015 Debacle Fest, an event that showcases Pacific Northwest experimental music and film.
NO/ZONES
Photographs Along Portland's Urban Growth Boundary 2015
Since the 1980s, the Portland metropolitan area boundary has been expanded over three dozen times to accommodate housing, jobs and industry. This spring I traveled along the eastern edge of the boundary and took photographs of the area.
The images are of the liminal spaces that exist along these boundaries.They reflect the newly created, ambiguous landscapes that exist at the intersection of conservation and development, natural processes and synthetic systems of control.
NO/ZONES was created in collaboration with Environmental Impact Statement, which exists to amplify threats to public lands through creative projects and by connecting artists and arts audiences to to watchdog environmental groups.
ARRESTING POWER- Resisting Police Violence in Portland,Oregon
Produced by Jodi Darby, Julie Perini and Erin Yanke
HD Video / 83 minutes / 2015
Arresting Power: Resisting Police Violence in Portland, Oregon documents the history of conflict between the Portland police and community members throughout the past fifty years.
The film features personal stories of resistance told by victims of police misconduct, the families of people who were killed by police, and members of Portland’s reform and abolition movements. Utilizing meditative footage taken at sites of police violence, experimental filmmaking techniques and archival newsreel, Arresting Power creates a space for understanding the impacts of violence and imagining a world without police.
MY CERTAIN FATE
HD video / 7:47 / 2015
My Certain Fate is a short video created for artist Roger Peet that visually deliberates the actions of his father, Terry Peet.
Performing as his father, Peet reenacts the steps that his father took to fake his own death in order to go AWOL from the British Air Force and fly helicopters for the CIA's interventions in Congo in the 1960's.
The video was featured as part of an installation entitled
'Traps, Flows and Echoes' at the Pacific Northwest
College of Art in Portland, Oregon.
CONSTELLATION
1:33 HD video 2014
Sunset in the militarized and heavily surveilled Pajarita Wilderness.
All audio and video recorded in the field during a Signal Fire Outpost
residency on the US/Mexico border.
MAN MOVIE
7:48 SD video assemblage 2014
This short movie began as an exercise in editing fast-paced sequences.
I took cuts from action movies and sequenced them together based on the dramaturgy of their action- running, jumping, punching.
I then connected these shots into a single scene; a testosterone-fueled
exquisite corpse that challenged both my recall and my patience.
THE CELLULOID CURETTE
20:00 SD video assemblage 2013
A play on the 1995 documentary film The Celluloid Closet, which explores the history of Hollywood's portrayal of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters, The Celluloid Curette deals with the
contemporary motion picture industry's portrayal of abortion.
SAFE & SOUND? Artists Respond to Police Violence
58:00 HD video 2013
Safe & Sound? uses audio, video and photography to tell stories of
individuals whose lives have been impacted by police violence and
intimidation. The project involved the participation of dozens of
community members.
HELLO... THIS IS JANE
3:00 HD video 2013
Judith Arcana is a JANE, a member of the feminist underground service
that helped more than 11,000 women and girls get safe abortions
in Chicago before the US Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in January of 1973.
MONSTER MOVIE
4:00 SD video assemblage 2013
Monster Movie is a mashup of archival film of the aftermath of
Hiroshima, 1940's and 1950's US anti-Japanese propaganda films
created for elementary school-aged children and scenes from
Yonggary, a late 1960's Korean "B" movie.
HITS OF SUNSHINE
35:56 HD video 2012
Hits of Sunshine was a site-specific multimedia music project
featuring experimental percussion composition, sound installation,
fashion design and video.
HITS took up residence at A-Z West in Joshua Tree, CA in October
2012. Musicians Lisa Schonberg, Heather Treadway, Allan Wilson
and Tara Jane O'Neil created compositions for drums that featured
field recordings of the natural area. Treadway created original
costumes for HITS and filmmaker Julie Perini filmed and projected
site-specific video.
35:56 HD video 2012
Hits of Sunshine was a site-specific multimedia music project
featuring experimental percussion composition, sound installation,
fashion design and video.
HITS took up residence at A-Z West in Joshua Tree, CA in October
2012. Musicians Lisa Schonberg, Heather Treadway, Allan Wilson
and Tara Jane O'Neil created compositions for drums that featured
field recordings of the natural area. Treadway created original
costumes for HITS and filmmaker Julie Perini filmed and projected
site-specific video.
HELLO.
32:06 SD video 2012
Video artist Julie Perini and I engaged in a collaborative volley where
a single videotape was passed back and forth over a period of several
months. We played with micro events in our lives, time, space, action and reaction.
EVERY NOW AND THEN YOU WIN
6:14 HD video 2012
This collaborative shadow show and audio documentary explores one
person's attempt to deal with gentrification in their hometown of San
Francisco by planting Redwood trees.
Every Now and Then You Win premiered at the STREETOPIA exhibition
at Luggage Store Gallery, 509 Cultural Center and in the Streets of
San Francisco. Audio recorded and edited by Erin Yanke.
GULF
12:00 SD video assemblage with HD video 2011
Gulf combines re-edited news coverage of the 1986 Space Shuttle
Challenger explosion and 8mm footage of 1950's home movies to
capture the split second intersection of hubris, pride, joy and grief.
Music by Marisa Anderson
GULF
12:00 SD video assemblage with HD video 2011
Gulf combines re-edited news coverage of the 1986 Space Shuttle
Challenger explosion and 8mm footage of 1950's home movies to
capture the split second intersection of hubris, pride, joy and grief.
Music by Marisa Anderson
100 SUNS
8:03 SD video assemblage 2011
100 Suns is comprised of declassified nuclear test films from Los Alamos National Laboratories, Denver Research Institute,
Kirkland Air Force Base and Lawrence Livermore Labs as well as other archival 16mm footage.
Music by Marisa Anderson
STONEWALL
17:48 SD video 2010
Stonewall is a response to a system of pubic education which perpetuatesthe teachings of white supremacy, pro-colonialism,
Capitalism, US exceptionalism and the inevitability of war, and which
hides the historical contributions of LGBTQI2S folks.
Borrowing the tactics used by the US system of popular education and
the religious right, Stonewall re|visions a famous historical event- the
American Civil War- and a historical figure, General Thomas "Stonewall"
Jackson- through a queer lens, challenging the hetero-normalization
of our forefathers and centering a culturally dominant queer analysis.
GIFT TO WINTER
49:29 SD video 2010
Utilizing nearly a decade of archival footage, the film documents the
history of the Winter Solstice Puppet Collective, a Portland-based
group that creates and performs elaborate shadow puppet shows every
year on December 21st.
Inspired by the Saturnalia story, the group’s original vision is to
create a performance as a gift to the god Saturn; an offering that
would ensure the return of Spring. Since then, the performance has
become an inspiring and much-anticipated community event.