Studios > Kenseth Armstead
Kenseth Armstead
Citizen
James is a feature length screenplay
that I wrote, based on James Armistead Lafayette’s true story as an
invisible-man-double-agent-
During the Residency, I will install
a working film set in the studio. The life-sized tableaus, handmade, drawn
and constructed by the artist, render an immersive abstraction of an
espionage landscape. The sets are flexible, extensible and collapsible,
allowing the artist to scale and customize the shoots to suit the particularities
of a given gallery and neighborhood context.
Shoots will occur as scheduled Open-Source Casting® events. Using the screenplay Citizen
James, actors, passersby and
invited guests will reenact James's role ending the American Revolution
by reading for the part of James, Cornwallis, The Marquis Lafayette
or George Washington, based on the schedule. The sets allow anyone
to “walk on” and be directed by the artist into preset cast positions
and costumes, while reading lines from teleprompters just off camera.
During the residency there will be a rotation of 5-6 scenes shot in
repetition. This allows for the possibility of editing together
hundreds of different people’s performances into a single director’s
cut of James’s idiosyncratic historic role.
In the end, experimental, hybrid footage, will emerge.
