Biomythography

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Logan Ryland Dandridge is a moving image artist whose films interrogate various histories through the poetics and aesthetics of experimental cinema. He received his BA from the University of Virginia in 2016 and his MFA in Studio Art from the University of Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art in 2018. His work interprets the nuances of African American culture through a combination of assemblage and juxtaposition. He clarifies his

interests in web-based culture and media convergence through multi-channel video installations.

As a filmmaker, nostalgia, representation, and religion are themes explored in his work. It is the

interior he considers—his own, as well as his parents and extended family by examining memory

as it relates to and complicates recorded history and self-making.

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STATEMENT

Recently, my research has explored the musical technique of counterpoint, which was described

by avant-garde musicians as the art of balancing similarity and difference to create harmony

between separate melodies. This main principle underscores the bulk of my interest in the visual

montage, proximity, and simultaneity. I’m curious about the aesthetic connections that are

formed out of this associative dialogue, rather than out of opposition. My thinking around these

topics are supported by a contrapuntal reading of the poetry and prose of Linton Kwesi Johnson

and Fred Moten. Within this framework, I examine the poetics of memory and trauma in consort

with a visual and textual exegesis of African American literature. This study is underpinned by

Georges Bataille’s philosophy on religion and the capacity of non-verbal communication. Such

as it is, Black music contains certain gestural qualities that introduce spiritual discourse through

musical intonations, trills, and rhythms. Within these emanations, the pride, beauty, and fear that

infuse Black music is momentarily visible. Images are sometimes just documents, some are

provocation, but others are testimony: The sound is the picture.

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