John L. Philipps

Go-Rilla Means War

Crystal Z Campbell, John L. Philipps

Crystal Z Campbell, John L. Philipps

Go-Rilla Means War derives from a decayed 35mm film discovered in the abandoned Slave Theatre, once the center of Black culture and civil rights organizing in Brooklyn. Featuring Black men in various states of martial arts training, the film's faded and discolored frames are a metonym for the media demonization of Black bodies in the context of the gentrification of Bedford-Stuyvesant.