Carrie Mae Weems: Past Tense

For as long as Antigone lives, she defines resistance. It’s the inevitable result of the impossible conditions society places upon her: caught in a triple-bind; subject to contradicting directives from her family, her faith, and the law; with the highest penalty for disobedience to any of them. Photographer, multi-media artist, and provocateur Carrie Mae Weems knows that this also explains why, in one of the longest cases of deserved survivor guilt on record, over two millennia later, we still cannot let go of Antigone: our culture continues to create the circumstance in which she must resist and die. In Past Tense, the MacArthur Foundation award winner combines stark still and moving images, dance, set design, music, and narrative to view contemporary confrontations between citizens like Alton Sterling, Laquan McDonald, Philando Castile, and a state supposedly established to serve and protect them. Then comes the moment when Weems asks permission to bury the dead.