This first-person travelogue maps the surrounding areas where former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was imprisoned before her trial for releasing classified documents to Wikileaks. In an attempt to piece together disparate landscapes and events into a larger narrative, this essay film tracks Manning’s places of detention from Kuwait to Virginia, Kansas, and Maryland. Following in the footsteps of Adachi’s theory of landscape and the peripatetic tradition of road movies, Field Visits for Chelsea Manning reflects a landscape of mass-detention, endless war, whistleblowers, and America’s unresolved history of race.

Field Visits for Chelsea Manning dir. Lance Wakeling, USA, 2014, HD video, 49 minutes.

This screening will be followed by a discussion with the director, Lance Wakeling, moderated by Karl McCool, moving image archivist and curator.

 

 

 

Lance Wakeling lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His recent films include “Field Visits for Chelsea Manning (2014),” “Subida al cielo (2013),” and “A Tour of the AC-1 Transatlantic Submarine Cable (2011).” His artworks and videos have shown at BAM, NYC, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, Supplement Gallery, London, NiMK, Amsterdam, The Woodmill, London, Import Projects, Berlin, Capricious Gallery, Brooklyn, and Future Gallery, Berlin. His work has appeared in Flash Art, The New York Times, ubu.com and Artforum.com, among other publications and websites.

Karl McCool is a moving image archivist and curator. Associate director of Dirty Looks NYC and distribution manager at Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), he received his MA in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation from New York University. He lives in New York City.