Artists: Adam Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer
Exhibition title: Empty Metal
Venue: fluent, Santander, Spain
Date: July 2 – September 1, 2021
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and fluent, Santander
fluent is pleased to announce Empty Metal, the first solo exhibition in Spain by filmmakers Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer presenting an installation of their homonymous film.
Empty Metal is a science-fiction political film set against a backdrop of racialised police brutality and mass surveillance in which Khalil and Sweitzer delve into anti-colonial politics by weaving together indigenous narratives, speculative fiction and subcultural references.
Through this political fantasy, they speculate about an alternative reality whose characters teeter on the dull knife edge that is contemporary American politics, but refuse to fall right or left. Instead, the characters lash out from the soul, and under the radar, in an attempt to achieve what their mainstream predecessors have yet to accomplish.
Adam Khalil (b.1988, United States) is a filmmaker and artist from the Ojibway tribe who lives and works in Brooklyn. His practice attempts to subvert traditional forms of ethnography through humor, relation, and transgression.
Bayley Sweitzer (b.1989, United States) is a filmmaker currently based in Brooklyn whose practice revolves around a dynamic engagement with the margins and an interest in the chronomorphic qualities of narrative, specifically the camera’s ability to consolidate dimensions.
Their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Sundance Film Festival; Walker Arts Center; Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Modern; Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley; Motel Gallery, Brooklyn and MIIT House, Osaka among other institutions.
