Zoe Beloff’s The Days of the Commune (2012)
Ten years to the day on November 15th, 2011, the final Occupy Wall Street protesters were forced out of New York City's Zuccotti Park, after Mayor Mike Bloomberg ordered a police raid of the encampments. Marking the occasion, EAI is featuring Zoe Beloff's The Days of the Commune (2012), a reimagining of Bertolt Brecht's 1949 play on the rise and fall of the 1871 Paris Commune inspired by the OWS movement. Occupying the streets of New York without permits, Beloff mobilized a cast of fifty actors, artists, and activists as a form of guerrilla street theater. The video is available to view through November 29th.
Zoe Beloff, The Days of the Commune
2012, 155 min, color, sound
Viewing period for this work has ended.
Zoe Beloff was influenced by Brecht's anti-illusionist theater, which aimed at unmasking social and political contradictions by breaking theatrical illusion, and composed her film from the public rehearsals she held in multiple locations around New York in the spring of 2012. Beloff considers The Days of the Commune a "work in progress"—a play, a movement and a revolution that continues to play out in the streets of New York, promoting the idea of history in an active dialogue with the present and the future.
Throughout the work, Beloff draws comparisons between the Paris Commune and the Occupy movement, both of which raised issues of social and economic inequality, greed and corruption through takeovers of public spaces and the creation of "cities within cities." The piece begins with a prelude that states:
“September 17th, 2011, New York City: the occupation begins. A group of people assemble in Zuccotti Park, not far from Wall Street. They come from many different places. They are brought together by a shared sense that the forces of global capital are destroying the lives of working people everywhere, and the time has come to speak for the 99%. An encampment comes to life. A city-within-a-city, a simple democracy based on consensus. In this city is a free kitchen, a library, clothing, medical attention, a space to discuss how we can change the world. Two months later on November 22nd, the encampment is destroyed by police.
January 1871: the city of Paris is under siege. All men who are capable of bearing arms are enrolled in the national guard. The gap between rich and poor widens still further. The working people are starving. They fight heroically to defend their city, but it soon becomes clear that the government and the generals do not have their best interest at heart. So the workers decide to take control of their city and form a progressive democratic assembly of the people. Thus begins the first great occupation in modern history.”
EAI is also pleased to present Zoe Beloff’s trilogy of works Fragments for a Future, which reimagines the unrealized Hollywood projects of three radical 20th century artists—James Agee, Bertolt Brecht, and Sergei Eisenstein. The three films will screen together for the first time at Metrograph Theater on November 22nd, 2021, followed by a Q&A with the artist. You can purchase tickets here.
2021 marks the 50th anniversary of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), one of the world’s leading resources for video and media art. As we celebrate this milestone, EAI will present a rotating series of video features from across our collection and publish a series of oral histories with key figures. To keep up to date on our anniversary activities, please sign up for our e-mail mailing list.