The four videos that were presented during the first week of PerpiTube’s section on Chaos/Control share an interest in naming, or sometimes performing, some of the forces that hinder full human autonomy and dignity. For instance, in “Long Story Short,” Natalie Bookchin’s subjects attest to shared histories of homelessness. Other videos in the section represent other disenabling, controlling forces—domestic abuse, drug addiction, racism, or (mental) colonialism, a term from Max King Cap—that instigate a chaotic and damaging misdirection of human energy and potential away from health, history, and power.

Each of the four videos in turn also consider the possibilities for resurrection, revolution, analysis or redress which can only become available once subjugation is named and seen. Invited gallery viewers from Prototypes were moved by the hope, inspiration, and surviving and surpassing of the victimhood of everyday life  that was also central to Bookchin’s video. They will be making their own responses to this and other issues raised in the show this week in collaboration with sound artist Dont Rhine.

Gabrielle Foreman speaks to her work at “gathering and gaining access to Black women’s past,” a form of redress that can place take in the classroom, in the gallery, and by extension in the streets. And just so, Fran Ilich pictures a (small, domestic) revolution in his video art, but not the grand one that had been anticipated at the Biennial of the Mexican revolution, despite it being foretold, or at least anticipated. He asks gallery viewers if art making itself is a form of controlling or refiguring colonialism, even if it sits alone in a gallery or awash in the chaotic sea of YouTube: