Alex Sweetman, Katherine Sweetman and Paula Gillen "2020 PTSD"
This show displayed during the COVID lockdown in Boulder, CO featured Alex Sweetman's video 2020 PTSD. Concept by Paula Gillen. Video production and sound editing by Katherine Sweetman. The video documents a tumultuous year that could be considered one long Trigger Warning. From Jan 2020 to Jan 2021, Sweetman took images off his tv screen of news coverage documenting Covid, the murder of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, the attack of January 6, plus heat waves and forest fires in the US. The hour long video captures our cultural trauma by compiling and condensing TV media footage from a tumultuous 13-month news cycle. The stills run one second each in sequence of the date and time shot. Photographs by Alex Sweetman.
The second section of the show featured the early photos of Sweetman and Gillen from the 70s and early 80s.
In the two-person show, “Trigger Warnings,” past and present collide through photography and video in a highly cognitive and psychological experience. The images shown were taken in the 1970s and 80s--a period notorious for pushing the boundaries of society and the boom time of film photography as an art form. This era had anti-establishment tendencies as a generation of youth experimented with sex and drugs, pushed back on the norms of capitalism, and explored socially progressive ideals in a more uncensored pre-digital environment. New ideas were being expressed artistically through conceptual and performance art, while gay, female, and civil rights gained traction. Later in the 80s, society was on a seemingly downward spiral of greed, inequality, cocaine, and crime as Reaganomics became the norm and the AIDS epidemic exploded. For all of the forward-thinking expression of this time, it was not devoid of traumas that are still experienced today. This exhibit explores the evolving attitude towards provocative material and challenges the viewer without shying away from the discomfort of being confrontational. Both Paula Gillen and Alex Sweetman grant independence to the viewer by offering an uncensored look at a more uncensored era of creation.
Clare Hall - March 2021, Boulder, CO
