A found-footage collage video that explores the process of growing up in an Arab family deeply affected by death and grief. Using footage from the Lebanese film “In the Battlefields,” as well as “Candy” and “The 100,” and audio from archival recorded Lebanese funeral laments, the video looks at how men and women express grief and anger under the patriarchy, as well as how trauma and childhood experiences can evolve into mental illness and patterns of behavior as adults. “Clench My Fists” is part of a larger body of work dealing with racial identity and the concept of “inherited grief;” that through biological or behavioral means, trauma is passed down through prospective family generations so that family members might experience the residual effects of trauma they did not personally witness. This body of work explores how the death of the artist’s grandfather, an Arab American, caused ripples of mental illness and skewed racial identity through her paternal family. Using filmic material that the artist used to connect with her heritage, “Clench My Fists” is part of a series of work focusing on not only decolonizing Imperialist Western understandings of the Middle East but to also show the beauty of the artist’s heritage, outside the context of her family.

Director: Sarah Trad

Manifesto: Art Downgrade (2019) is a composite concept that combines art and economics, from the research of image production related to the popularity of low-cost smartphones and the slowdown of China's economic growth in recent years. With the declining consumption power of the urban middle class, new economic growth points exist in a wider range of non-urban areas and rural populations. This manifesto advocates reevaluate alternative perspectives and decentralization of urban narrative in contemporary art creation. By splicing a large number of green screen materials from the Internet and selfie clips made by mobile phone, the manifesto aims to evoke the creative impulse and imagination of ordinary people. Meanwhile, it encourages the integration of open-source media, technology, and daily labour in creation.

Director: Ruiqi Zhang

Monday morning, September 15, 2008. The economy is in shambles, an unprecedented boom has come to an end. The CEOs of the largest banks had just been summoned to the Federal Reserve, in Lower Manhattan, for a full weekend. His role: solve the world economy and rewrite the financial rules. Not much is known about what happened that weekend at the Federal Reserve. Until now.

On Monday morning, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has a vision for the economy of the future. Dimon writes a letter to Bill Winters, his head of investment banking at JP Morgan Chase, on his helicopter ride to work. This is the letter.

Director: Nathaniel Sullivan