Trilogy of Single-Channel High Definition Video with Sound, 2020-2021

These Unruly And Ungovernable Selves is a trilogy of short videos that recontextualizes characters from Handelman’s previous works into a hypnotic visual essay about the transfiguring of interiority during periods of isolation and fear.

Also known as The Pandemic Series (2020-2021), it takes as its starting point the Coronavirus pandemic and filters it through theorist Jill Casid’s writings on the necrocene, which Casid has described as living and dying on a dying planet; and Walter Benjamin’s writings on the difference between thresholds and boundaries.

Handelman's characters, who each have already struggled with existential questions of belonging and fear in her projects Dorian, A Cinematic Perfume (2009/11), Irma Vep, The Last Breath (2013/15), and Hustlers & Empires (2018) are juxtaposed with found images and texts sourced during the pandemic to take on a new form that both denies and struggles with containment.