Jefferson Pinder
Bill Mesler
Although they approach the subject from different disciplines, both Korean-born journalist Bill Mesler and multimedia artist Jefferson Pinder respond as social scientists when it comes to discussing the urban experience. In this partnership, Pinder and Mesler explored the concept of immobility in the American city. Mesler challenges the accepted idea of a War on Drugs, analyzing its impact on our culture. Pinder explores resistance in his film, Mule, a performance piece where forward progress on an inner-city street becomes damn near impossible. Both dare us to rethink our accepted ideas and to meditate on our future.
photo by Mitro Hood
by Bill Mesler and Jefferson Pinder
What would it take to free a generation from the burdens of the inner city?
"Anthropologists say one can tell more about a society by what it doesn't talk about than what it does, that a society's most deeply held beliefs are never discussed, and hence never challenged," writes Mesler. Here, both he and Pinder challenge norms. "Mule is about resistance," Pinder says of his short film pictured here. "In this performance piece, forward progress on an inner-city street becomes damn near impossible. Like a mule, I am a beast of burden, not focusing on the end, rather pushing forward with blinders and hoping that the poetry of my labor amounts to a pure meditation of what has come before and what lies ahead."
