Artist and filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins discusses his Spike Island exhibition This Action Lies and the wider themes in his work with curator, educator and writer Shama Khanna.
The artist’s films explore themes of language, performance and media technologies, approaching monologue as a way to fuse original scriptwriting with documentary sources such as found text.
James N. Kienitz Wilkins
James N. Kienitz Wilkins is a filmmaker and artist based in Brooklyn, New York His work has screened at the New York Film Festival, Toronto, Locarno, Rotterdam, Migrating Forms, Ann Arbor, CPH:DOX, MoMA PS1, BAMcinemaFest, Images, and beyond. In 2016, he was awarded the Kazuko Trust Award presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. In 2017, he was included in the Whitney Biennial, and a retrospective of his work was showcased at Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal (RIDM). In 2018, he premiered new work in a solo show at Gasworks (London) and the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement (Geneva). He is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City.
Shama Khanna
Shama Khanna is an independent curator, writer and educator from, and based in London. Khanna curates flatness.eu and the artists’ moving image series, Non-Linear. Related screening and discussion events have taken place at international venues including: Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen; Chisenhale Gallery and Auto Italia in London; Palais de Tokyo in Paris; Moderna Museet, Malmö; LIMA, Amsterdam; Western Front, Vancouver; Microscope, New York; Rupert, Vilnius; warehouse, Berlin; Syllabus; LUX Scotland and CCA, Glasgow.
Khanna teaches on the Curating Contemporary Art MA programme at the Royal College of Art and the Experimental Film MA at Kingston University. Recent texts have been published by NANG, Art Monthly, The White Review, LUX, Documenta 14 and Aorist, co-edited with 7 other writers. Khanna is a Trustee of not / no.w.here cooperative, an Arts Adviser for Jerwood Arts and a curator-in-residence across Afterall and Shades of Noir.