Meditations on Crime: An Evening of Film and Music with Jonah Freeman and Harper Simon

MEDITATIONS ON CRIME
An Evening of Film and Music with Jonah Freeman and Harper Simon

Q+A moderated by Adam Green
Plus Special Guests!

Meditations on Crime is an ambitious multi-media project that includes a film, a book, and an album. Originally conceived as a collaborative album by Harper Simon it has expanded to involve an all-star roster of writers, artists, and musicians. This evening will showcase works by contributors to the project along with a discussion between Jonah Freeman + Harper Simon who co-edited the book and produced the film.

A book signing will follow the event.

Mercury City, 2016
RT: 23 minutes

Produced and Directed by Jonah Freeman + Justin Lowe

Mercury City is the third film in the critically acclaimed San San Trilogy which has screened in museums, galleries, and film festivals worldwide. The films tell the story of The San San Metroplex; an urban corridor that exists along the coast of California. It is based on an idea put forth by futurist Herman Kahn in his 1967 book The Year 2000. He speculated that the coastal area between San Diego and San Francisco would grow into one giant metropolis. This never happened. Freeman + Lowe have taken this veritable fiction as the basis for a sprawling, multifaceted project that involves several large-scale installations in addition to the trilogy of films.

Mercury City is set in an abandoned section of the San San Metroplex that, after years of decay, is being revived by a youth counterculture. The film takes the form of a faux-ethnographic cut-up narrative illustrated through a series of props, environments, pictures, and architectural models. The aesthetic is inspired by the surrealistic banality of a breakfast cereal commercial. A roaming camera visits a sequence of empty rooms and forgotten tableaus. The haunting absence of the human form points toward an object-oriented cinema where the built world takes center stage.

Meditations on Crime, 2023
RT: 28 minutes

Produced and Directed by Jonah Freeman + Harper Simon

This film was produced to coincide with the release of the book/album package. It uses Harper Simon’s music and excerpts from an essay by booker prize winning author Ben Okri as an armature for Freeman’s kaleidoscopic cinematic collage of found and original footage. Acclaimed actress Katherine Waterson narrates the film which, while touching upon a broad spectrum of crime, finds its focus in the prison system and all its contradictions.

The book which is co-edited by Jonah Freeman and Harper Simon features essays by such notables as Ben Okri, Miranda July, Hooman Majd, and Jerry Stahl, alongside artwork from giants like Cindy Sherman, Nate Lowman, Chase Hall, Julian Schnabel, Tracy Emin, and Raymond Pettibon.

The album produced by Harper Simon features musical collaborations with a sweeping range of contributors, including Julia Holter, Gang Gang Dance, King Khan, Ian Svenonius, and the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Jonah Freeman is visual artist and filmmaker who lives and works in New York, NY. His work, while grounded in the filmmaking process, has manifested in a variety of forms including painting, sculpture, and large-scale installations. The central theme of his practice is the odysseys of the constructed world and the resulting social and psychological effects. He has exhibited in museums, galleries and biennials worldwide including The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Deitch Projects, NYC/LA, ARoS Museum, Denmark, The Centre Pompidou, Paris, MOMA/PS 1 NYC, Marlborough Gallery, NYC/London, among others. His films have screened in numerous film festivals including The International Film Festival Rotterdam, Locarno International Film Festival and The Rome International Film Festival. He frequently collaborates with artist Justin Lowe.

Harper Simon is a writer and musician who lives in Los Angeles. Simon is an executive producer on the upcoming feature film Pavements directed by Alex Ross Perry, about the seminal ’90s band Pavement, along with Vice and Rick Yorn. He is also a contributing writer for Airmail, Spin, Purple Magazine and the L.A. Review of Books.