Abigail Child is a film and video maker whose montage pushes the envelope of form and content with smarts and passion. Her work in the 80s explores gender while focusing on strategies for rewriting narrative, while her recent 90s productions recuperate documentary to poetically explore public space, whether the homeless of Lower Manhattan or Petersburg, Russia after Perestroika. * She has exhibited her award-winning art extensively in both solo and group shows, including most recently:The American Century, 1950-2000, the Whitney Biennial (1989 + 97), the New York Film Festival & Video Side Bar (1989 + 1993), and in Europe- (London , Rotterdam, Torino, Vienna, Pesaro..). She is author of five books of poetry (A Motive for Mayhem, Mob and Scatter Matrix ). and her films and videos have received many honors including: an ITVS Screenwriting Grant, Guggenheim Foundation and Fulbright Fellowships, NYFA, NYSCA, & NEA Interarts Grants, Jerome and Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grants, Massachusetts Arts Council New Works and Creative Artists Public Service Awards. Her films are in the permanent collection of MOMA, New York and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among others. * Child was an undergraduate at Harvard and is senior Faculty in Film at the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston.

8 Million 25 min., b/w & color, sound, video, 1992

"Experimental music and eroticism swirl about each other in Shiver, the second of the 8 Million stories which can be found in this lively and
continuing collaborative 'album'. In Kiss of Fire , Child reworks images from her squisy TV soap Swamp (1991), to punctuate romantic
cliche."

Selected for New York Film Festival Video Visions (1993) Short songs chart erotic tales in an urban topology. Includes FISHTANK, SHIVER, KISS OF FIRE, 8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE, and FAINT CLUE.

The myths of popular culture-romance and TV soaps-provide the motifs for the work which restructures memory-image-fragment to foreground the body against a mechanized landscape. In the shape of small stories, 8 Million rewrites women's drama. The artists have worked together previously as a part of VIDEO MUSICA held at The Garage NYC in the fall of 1989, in which some of these songs were performed 'live'. The project focuses on the relationship between sound and image. It stresses the potential for image to take its place as a musical component, to be a member of the band. And on occasion to be the basis of the score: image as conductor, the music performed to the video. In addition, the production of a Video Album reconstitutes the idea of the musical record, establishing a new unit or mode to experience sound and image.

Musicians include: Catherine Jauniaux (vocals), Zeena Parkins (accordian), Hahn Rowe (violin) and Ikue Mori (percussion).

Distributed by Video Data Bank and Canyon Cinema Coop. Award winner of Atlanta Image Festival l992/performed live at Intermedia New York 1992 (premiere) & at New Langton Arts, San Francisco 1992 /featured at Worldwide Video Festival l992, Universite d'Ete, Lille, France 1993 & New York Film Festival Video Visions 1993.

Through the looking lass 12 min., color, sound, video, 1995

" a revised Snow White, exploring abstract narrative structures, seduced and reconstructed, a wicked dream."

Featuring: Leonora Champagne. Music: Ikue Mori. Technical help: Benton Bainbridge. Camera/editor: Abigail Child

Below the New: a Russian Chronicle 30 min., color, sound, video, 1999

A vivid, impressionistic portrait of St. Petersburg in transition, with comments and anecdotes by two young Russians to describe the emotional, political and economic transformations that have wrenched their society. Combining video diary footage and archival material, BELOW THE NEW: A Russian Chronicle documents daily life and Russian and Soviet myth to portray the changes over the last decade. Intimate and historical, the work rhythmically combines sound and image to explore the intersection between personal and collective memory. Extending the documentary aspect of Child's montage, BELOW THE NEW creates a symphonic structure to explore public space to gain a better understanding of both the economic and moral crisis facing present-day Russia.

"It would be interesting to compare Below the New with Dziga Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera. Apart from a shared taste for a montage that takes into account the internal logic of the pictures, the latter depicts a world dazed by utopia and eager for a brighter future, whereas the former shows a nation whose conscience seems to be incurably riveted on the past." -- Bertrand Bacque, Visions du Nyon Documentary Festival, Catalogue

Selected Screenings: BAM Rose Theatre, New York Premiere; Director's Choice Black Maria Film and Video Festival 1999; The Freud Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; Harvard Archive, Cambridge; Donnell Library, NYC