Doing It, Fluid

Abstract

Abstract In this interview essay Michele Prettyman talks with filmmaker, moving image artist, curator, and producer Elissa Blount Moorhead about her work, the power of collaboration, and her innovative praxis. Taking some inspiration from black musical traditions, which are central to Blount Moorhead's roots, Prettyman borrows the essay's title phrasing, “Doing It, Fluid,” from a song by the group the Blackbyrds. The song's aggregation of an array of sonic components embodies the capacities of black expressive life to animate multiple creative impulses at once, providing a compelling analogy to Blount Moorhead's “fluid” practices of black making, gathering, and collaboration. The introductory essay outlines ways in which fluidity is useful both as an analytic and as an approach to studying Blount Moorhead's work, which often reveals unseen nuances in Black life by visually reconstituting images, artifacts, memories, and speculative histories. Prettyman also explores Blount Moorhead's role in shaping an art and moving image collective of Black media makers in Baltimore, coining the phrase “the Baltimore Arts and Image Renaissance (BAIR),” and citing Baltimore as an important base for Blount Moorhead, Bradford Young, and filmmaker Radha Blank, among others, and as a hub for TNEG, a film production studio helmed by Blount Moorhead, Malik Hassan Sayeed, and Arthur Jafa. Together the essay and interview reveal the impact of Blount Moorhead's praxis and the ways in which contemporary Black filmmakers remain connected to histories of Black creative collectives while also reimagining black aesthetic and technological possibilities.