Public Square, 2025
HD Video, sound, color. 3 minutes.
"Public Square" is an experimental documentary that follows the artist as they visit the public squares in Savannah, a city whose urban design has been debated as either an ideal civic society or an expression of military strategy. Through a series of prompts, reflections, and meandering conversations, the artist collaborates with six local residents to translate the personal and historical into landscapes of collective memory.
This work frames Savannah’s squares as a living archive, reflecting on how its design has informed the city’s history, movement, and social interactions since its founding. It considers how the infrastructure of public defense carries spatial ideologies that guide how we navigate public spaces. The film itself is structured as a grid that observes how residents inhabit, resist, and reinterpret public space.
Drawing on research in autoethnography and the travelogue, this work troubles the distinction between ethnographer and Other by positioning the artist as a traveler––becoming a stranger in a foreign landscape. The travelogue not only becomes a diary of the journey, but also produces a sense of otherness in the fragmented self.
Thank you to the participants: Danielle Hodes, Ashley Jackson, Kate Lacivita, Jana Marie Cariddi, Luciana Spracher, and Jalynn Young.