Common Carrier

Common Carrier tracks a small network of artists and their associates, skipping between scripted performances and conversations in which real people play versions of themselves. A highly inventive look at creative life, labor, and technology, the film is a discordant rush of layered images—contrasting views, superimposed—set to a shifting radio soundtrack. The film, says Wilkins, reflects “our multifaceted contemporary world where there is no one right way to look or listen: we are perpetually barraged by a sea of information, histories, and the promises of absolute connection, while remaining fundamentally alone.” Co-presented by the Renaissance Society in conjunction with their exhibit David Maljković: Also on View. 

(USA, 2017, 78 min., DCP) 

James N. Kienitz Wilkins is a filmmaker and artist based in Brooklyn. His work has screened at the New York Film Festival, Toronto IFF, Locarno IFF, Rotterdam IFF, Migrating Forms, MoMA PS1, Tate Modern, and beyond. In 2016, he was awarded the Kazuko Trust Award presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. In 2017, he was included in the Whitney Biennial and a retrospective of his work was showcased at RIDM (Montreal). In 2018, he premiered new work in a solo show at Gasworks (London) and the Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement (Geneva).