Amid Flowers, Crowns, and Tears

"Ghosts of Lost Futures" is a program of video works by 10 artists commissioned by the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection. Each artist was given access to the same cache of footage from the WFAA Newsfilm Collection shot in Dallas, Texas in the year 1970. The program was intended to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the archive, but due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, the program was not completed until the Spring of 2021. The artists were given complete freedom in how they re-interpreted the footage and its historical context. The resulting works are profound meditations on mourning, melancholy, disaster, and various reinterpretations of the events of 2020 and 2021 through images of Dallas' past. "Amid Flowers, Crowns, and Tears" is Liz Rodda's submission.