Abigail Raphael Collins uses video installation and experimental nonfiction to listen to what is considered unspeakable. Her work begins from a queer, feminist perspective, exploring what is passed on through generations, outside of language: the gaps, silences, and stutters in intimate and historical dialogue. The culmination of seven years of researching, filming, and editing, BLACKOUT is an experimental documentary that unravels relationships between the film and television industry and the US military. Beginning with the artist’s father, a method actor with PTSD frequently cast in military roles, BLACKOUT threads together interviews of individuals working at the mediatized military junction: a combat videographer, a role player for military trainings, a script supervisor in the Army, and a writer for a TV show partially funded by the US military.
