DAY 365.
a film from the Days With(in) series 

A family gets ready for a celebratory dinner during a morbid reality.

Pushing our present-day anxieties to the extreme, a central question this film poses: what does it look like for a family to be confined in their home?

~ Days With(in) is a series developed by a group of Columbia University students in response to the COVID19 pandemic. Self-isolated in their homes, students responded to the crisis by using these short films to reflect and inquire on the world around them. The films were developed in the “Video as Inquiry” with Prof. Frances Negron-Muntaner offered by the CSER. ~ 

Part of the Fourth Annual Idea and Media Labfest

HEAVEN OUT OF HELL
a film from the Days With(in) series

Mixed Media documentary consisting of animation, painting, and interviews with people at home during the COVID pandemic.

3 people discuss how quarantine has affected their lives and what they are doing to cope with the sudden change and restrictions.

~ Days With(in) is a series developed by a group of Columbia University students in response to the COVID19 pandemic. Self-isolated in their homes, students responded to the crisis by using these short films to reflect and inquire on the world around them. The films were developed in the “Video as Inquiry” with Prof. Frances Negron-Muntaner offered by the CSER. ~

Part of the Fourth Annual Idea and Media Labfest

COMMUNITY + GRIEF
a film from the Days With(in) series

A family of three adjusts during NYC's shelter in place.

When a shelter in place goes into effect, a full-time student figures out how to manage her new life at home with her husband and five-year-old son. She finds herself overwhelmed by not only her own school work, but juggling a part-time job and being the new "teacher” for her son. During this time, their family struggles to stay connected to family and friends who are scattered across the city, states and countries. Surrounded by death, grief, and uncertainty they find new ways to reconnect.

~ Days With(in) is a series developed by a group of Columbia University students in response to the COVID19 pandemic. Self-isolated in their homes, students responded to the crisis by using these short films to reflect and inquire on the world around them. The films were developed in the “Video as Inquiry” with Prof. Frances Negron-Muntaner offered by the CSER. ~

Part of the Fourth Annual Idea and Media Labfest

A film from the Days With(in) series.

Reflections on what type of permanent incarcerations are sustained outside of a state of emergency.

During COVID-19, some of the affected countries installed a quarantine period of self-isolation, meaning that free civil individuals with a home where they could shelter, were forced to lock down for over 2 months. Eventually, the anxiety of enforced lockdown was felt, and, though necessary, this decision over bodies also started to problematize the biocontrol of systems that have been determining a large amount of our ways of living for centuries. Confronted with this situation, we have observed that these complex states of distress emerge from very specific positions and locations, and that these specificities need to be addressed. Therefore, in our opinion, these times of lockdown could be looked upon as strategic moments to raise the following question: Are we even aware of what permanent incarcerations we are sustaining?
And in this specific case we want to raise the issue of non-human bodies, from the ethics of antiespecism. We intend to reflect on how their specific flesh has been constructed as extraction and has been the target/object of unrepresented violence. Non-human bodies are,, in many cases, subject to 'permanent quarantines' which only comes to an end with their murder. In a move towards the recognition and respect of many forms of life, we deconstruct the anthropocentric and colonial category of the 'human', ultimately asking: which bodies count?

~ Days With(in) is a series developed by a group of Columbia University students in response to the COVID19 pandemic. Self-isolated in their homes, students responded to the crisis by using these short films to reflect and inquire on the world around them. The films were developed in the “Video as Inquiry” with Prof. Frances Negron-Muntaner offered by the CSER.~

Part of the Fourth Annual Idea and Media Labfest

Translation:

Today I woke up feeling trapped
In a broken kids' game
Like a spinning top made of flesh and scales.
Going round the space that has been consumed by my breath
In this show of agony and guffaw
Without a backdrop or final applause,
only mirrors.

Who is my public?
Who is my executioner?

Perhaps my greatest act of defiance is simply to stop breathing.
After all, I am disposable gear
a quasi- static puppet threaded by the bowels
A docile silence that doesn’t produce disconfort.

Who is my public?
Who is my executioner?

Let me propose massive suicide
Let's see if the alarm goes off and the lights go out.

I wonder if the story repeats itself
in every cement block and at every dirty window.
If there are more unconnected prisoners
waiting for the perfect suicide moment.

How can you resist a dictatorship alive
when your only hope is the awakening of people who would buy you for 3 cents?
I wish I was made of plastic.
I dream
of finding my beloved ones
far away from the terror meant by living forever wthin this impossed circus
a prisoner of my own movements.

Today I woke up and cried on my pillow.
All your life being my slave without me seeing you.
All my life being a muderer without me seeing myself.

Poem by: Zahira Galindo Salmerón.
A short film by Ángela Harris Sánchez and Zahira Galindo Salmerón.

Screensaver 2020
a film from the Days With(in) series

An experimental film about spring, my favorite season, and losing it to a pandemic.

As the flowers and leaves and trees of Manhattan bloom, we find ourselves surrounded by anxious noise.

~ Days With(in) is a series developed by a group of Columbia University students in response to the COVID19 pandemic. Self-isolated in their homes, students responded to the crisis by using these short films to reflect and inquire on the world around them. The films were developed in the “Video as Inquiry” with Prof. Frances Negron-Muntaner offered by the CSER.~

Part of the Fourth Annual Idea and Media Labfest