Phillip Warnell
Ming of Harlem: Twenty One Storeys in the Air
Between 2000 and 2003, Antoine Yates lived with Ming, Al, and other less permanent guests in a 21-storey Public Housing Complex in Harlem, New York. By then, Antoine Yates was a 37-year old Northern-American citizen, Ming a 3-year old, 400-pound Bengal tiger, and Al was a 7-foot long alligator.
Ming of Harlem explores the relations between these three individuals and the space they shared. The film presents beautiful and powerful portraits of each of them, which are embedded in ethical and political concerns, and accompanied by French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy's own response to this interspecies relation.
The screening is followed by a conversation between Phillip Warnell and Filipa Ramos, who has developed the film program accompanying the exhibition Welcome to the Jungle. Departing from where the film leaves us, the dialogue will focus on recent philosophical and theoretical contributes on the figure of the animal, and on Warnell's own investigations, focusing on art, film and poetry and how they act as possible substitutes of an animal whose presence is longed for, mourned, imagined and projected.