You May Start the Conversation Now: Two Exercises in Collaboration Towards Abolition

Abstract

You May Start the Conversation Now: Two Exercises in Collaboration Towards Abolition is a portfolio of two screen-based collaborations between Kriss Li and Amber Kim, a prisoner in Washington State. The first piece, Abolition Film Society: Flipbook Cinema is a multi-media installation composed of a two-channel silent video, five flipbooks based on the video, and a publication of conversations between Kriss and Amber. The piece emerged out of a six-month reading group. The second project, You May Start the Conversation Now, is a twenty-minute short film that documents a day of rehearsals with two actors performing science fiction dialogues co-written by Amber and Kriss through a game of exquisite corpse. This support paper will examine the obstacles, frictions, and possibilities for solidarity in artistic co-creations between people inside and outside prison, examined within the context of a broader movement to abolish prisons.