Director Steve McQueen’s Art Project Offers a Haunting Look at the FBI Surveillance of Paul Robeson
Working on the project, now on display at the Whitney Museum in New York City, inspired the 12 Years a Slave filmmaker to begin making a biopic of the legendary performer and activist.
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When director Steve McQueen was 14, a neighbor introduced him to the work of Paul Robeson. McQueen was initially intrigued by the legendary performer and activist’s commanding presence, and he began to research his career. He, like many others who have studied Robeson, was amazed. Of the level of inspiration, he said that “it was a like a whale rising from the sea.”
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About six years ago he embarked on a project about Robeson. Titled End Credits, like the final roll of a movie, McQueen’s project is plaintive, compelling and exhaustive. He takes reams of reports from FBI surveillance and scrolls them on a screen as male and female actors do voice-overs of the reports. Initially a three-hour installation, the current iteration is 11 hours long and is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City until May 14 as part of its “Open Plan” exhibition series. The series offers pop-up exhibits to leading artists and musicians in its fifth-floor Neil Bluhm Family Gallery.
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It's absolutely astonishing,” said McQueen during the museum’s opening-night Q&A session Friday about the breadth and detail of the FBI monitoring of Robeson, noting that even leisure activities were reported on and that surveillance of the legend’s associates continued for two years after his death in 1976.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/05/director_steve_mcqueen_s_art_project_offers_a_haunting_look_at_the_fbi_surveillance.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26
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