Documentary filmmaker and installation artist Kate Levy sees herself as an activist – a title often conveyed by artists these days – whom Levy sometimes portrays as a participant rather than a documentarian.
“My work always has a political analysis – namely anti-exploitation and anti-racism,” Levy said. Hyperallergic. “I also want to reveal how people play roles within systems, chronicle the choices we make when we are complicit, and share the collective power to fight against those systems. I always try to highlight the voices of activists and their brilliant analyzes of power.
Over the past few years, Levy has come to recognize that collaborating directly with activists or being directly involved in activism sometimes costs her the time needed to be an artist herself and explore forms, themes and ideas that may not be useful when shooting. is compiled with politically motivated results, such as legal documents.
“However, in cases where I am working for a more abstract installation or film, I try to use exhibitions as an opportunity to provide activists with platforms to educate the public about their work through panels and workshops” , said Levy. “Also, by making these works, it ultimately helps me sharpen my political analysis.”
These new works include a film titled Detroit will breathe (2021), which takes its name from an activist group that formed in the summer of 2020 in response to the police killing of George Floyd (and countless others). Nonviolent protesters — both Detroit residents and commuters, of all races, genders and ages — were later brutalized by police. Later that year, protesters filed a complaint: Detroit Will Breathe vs. City of Detroit.
“It was clear that the police actions were intended to scare or prevent people from continuing to participate, so they filed a First Amendment challenge,” Levy said. “Their attorneys asked me to edit the body camera footage they received during the discovery process into something they could submit in court.” Here, Levy’s indirect participation in the protests gave him the emotional distance needed to work with the images.
Detroit will breathe has been screened at film festivals and serves as both a court document and a work of art for the public. The project built on relationships established by Levy during the production of an earlier documentary about Detroit water cutspowered by near a decade of research on the extremely controversial policy of access and protection of drinking water.
One of these projects, an installation entitled The roar on the other side of the silence (2022), was commissioned by the University of Michigan Museum of Art for the Fall 2022 exhibition, Watershed. Steeped in anti-pipeline politics, work on the project began in 2014 as a walkway along Enbridge’s crude oil pipeline.
“Originally, I was taking photos of mundane objects and scenes, trying to transcend the everyday and reach for the catastrophe below,” Levy said. “It was also a twist on typical road trip photography. Rather than driving along the Mississippi or Route 66, I was interested in what was underground.
The second part of the project involved a deep dive into the history of the pipeline: “I discovered that many of the most important decisions were made through bureaucratic minutiae – arcane legal decisions and regulatory rules – which had deep and lasting impacts on communities and the environment,” Levy said. She paired photographs from 2014 with sculptures inspired by her research. For example, boulders gathered at the top of pipelines and engraved with descriptions of events fast, including a decision imposed by the legislature or a spill that happened in an instant.
Levy also compiled a receipt listing all spills since the 1960s on Enbridge’s Lakehead system (which contains Line 5), a document that runs several feet long. “I was excited by the poetic potential and insight that could be drawn from lawsuits, environmental reports and documents,” she said. “I’ve provided a historical timeline so viewers can cross-reference the objects.”
Levy currently divides her time between New York and her hometown of Detroit, where she returns periodically to continue her current work, balancing freelance for pay with personal projects. But even when Levy works on commission, his penchant for community documentary storytelling shines through. Recent rental projects include a year-long storytelling project with the joint initiative of the Van Alen Institute and the Urban Design Forum, Quarters nowwhich connected local neighborhood organizations with architects and designers.
“I like subjects that take unconventional ways to solve problems,” Levy said. “I also find it hard to pass up an opportunity to tear up hypocritical institutions or political actors who rely on oppressive but hokey, family-oriented, sympathetic narratives, I’m just doing my job.”
“To expose and satirize corny and offensive propaganda is one of my greatest pleasures,” she added. “I’m drawn to a story with themes of rebellion while highlighting real injustices.”
