The Ringling and Sarasota Film Festival Present a One-Night-Only Film Event

March 30, 2022 – Sarasota

The evening features films by Detroit native and Sarasota-based conceptual/multimedia artist, writer, and activist John Sims. The films in this trilogy are a retrospective journey of Sims’ prolific works over the last 20 years, focusing on themes that address critical issues pressing American contemporary politics and culture. 

The evening-length program will include 2020: (Di)Visions of America, AfroDixieRemixes: The Confederate Chapel Listening Session/VMFA, and Recoloration Proclamation and will conclude with a post-screening talkback with the artist. After the program, the audience is invited to the Rosemary Restaurant for a reception starting at 9 p.m.

Elizabeth Doud, Currie-Kohlman Curator of Performance, emphasized how important the work 2020: (Di)Visions of America was part of the museum’s service to artists during the pandemic, “John brought his process into the theater, and created a significant piece of performance that was filmed live, and edited with his trademark video and animation vignettes, resulting in a film that stands as a unified artistic documentation of 2020’s explosive and profound impacts and possibilities’ said Doud.

Sims’ multidisciplinary practice pushes audiences to engage with knotted and timely social challenges in ways that ask us to think beyond naming problems and move us towards truth and creative reconciliation. These new films bring impactful voices and stories from the American experience: from the past of American Slavery to the current aftermath of the Coronavirus pandemic, demonstrating how the power of art pushes us to survive and become better versions of ourselves.

“We are thrilled to continue bolstering our creative partnership with The Ringling through this meaningful and timely film retrospective,” said SFF President Mark Famiglio. “It is an honor to include John Sims and his works as a part of our festival program this year, and we are incredibly grateful to The Ringling for helping make this showcase a reality.”

About the Films

2020: (Di)Visions of America

Running time; 58:23 mins

This film reflects the year 2020’s historic collage of collective fear, unrest, and protest: the conditions for both exposing deep divisions and the making of a new vision that values justice, social respect, and the power of transformative compassion. Based on his recent op-eds and the use of an evolving self-portrait, the film mines the enduring legacy of Confederate iconography and monuments, the Coronavirus pandemic, and American policing. The multimedia performance work engages the wider community with letters written by and performed by Dr. Lisa Merritt, Chandra Carty, and John Sims and was recorded on the stage of the Historic Asolo Theater and later staged at La Mama Experimental Theater Club.

AfroDixieRemixes: The Confederate Chapel Listening Session/VMFA

Running time 63:52 mins

This documentary film captures a series of responses to artist John Sims’ 13-year AfroDixie Remixes project, a collection of 14 tracks that remixes, remaps, and cross-appropriates the song Dixie (the anthem of the Confederacy) in the style of the following Black-music genres: spiritual, blues, gospel, jazz, funk calypso, samba, soul, rhythm & blues, house, and hip-hop. In 2021, The Afro Dixie Remixes music project was featured as a sound installation in Virginia Museum Fine Arts’ special exhibition, The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, at the Confederate Memorial Chapel and curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver. 

Recoloration Proclamation 

Running time 30:00 mins.

The film was created from various elements and inspired by themes associated with John Sims’ Recoloration Proclamation. This 20-year project examines and responds to the Confederate iconography of white supremacy in the context of American slavery, Civil War memory, and African American culture. 

About the Artist

John Sims, a Detroit native, is a Sarasota-based conceptual/multimedia artist, writer, and activist who creates art and curatorial projects spanning the areas of installation, performance, text, music, film, and large-scale activism, informed by mathematics, design, the politics of white supremacy, sacred symbols/anniversaries, and poetic/political text. For 20 years, he has been working at the forefront of contemporary mathematical art and leading the national pushback on Confederate iconography. Currently, he is a Resident Artist at La Mama Experimental Theater Group and at the Ringling Museum of Art, where he developed the performance piece 2020: (Di)Visions of America.

He is also completing his two-decade national art-activism project, Recoloration Proclamation, which explores, re-examines, and remixes Confederate iconography related to the African American experience. The project features recolored Confederate flags; a hanging installation in Gettysburg; a 13 southern states Confederate flag funeral; videos; site-specific performances; a play; a collection of experimental films; the music project, “AfroDixieRemixes,” the annual “Burn and Bury Confederate Flag Memorial”; and the outside performance and Kennedy Museum exhibition of “The Proper Way to Hang to a Confederate Flag” at Ohio University. Over the years, this work has incorporated more than 150 collaborators, including poets, musicians, and artists throughout the country.

Tickets available at: https://www.sarasotafilmfestival.com/film/american-minefield-a-john-sims-trilogy/