Cecilia Dougherty
I took this picture of the 3-story mural of Biggie Smalls located at 1091 Bedford Avenue in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. The mural is astonishing in its height, boldness, and beauty. It was going to be painted over but has been saved. A PIX11 story about it here.
About Cecilia Dougherty
I am a visual artist working in video and web-based media programs. I have created more than 30 videoworks in experimental narrative, documentary, and installation and have exhibited and screened my work in many venues internationally. My most recent explorations are in the area of sound composition. I have a PhD in Philosophy and I teach in New York.
My book, The Irreducible I: Space, Place, Authenticity, and Change (Atropos Press, New York and Dresden) was published in 2013. Irreducible is an argument for the removal of hierarchical classifications for humans, animals, machines, geographies, and the things we make and do, proposing an approach to our problems as a species on Earth in terms of the interactivity of all elements involved. Get rid of the pyramid view of who and what is at the bottom and who is at the top.
Some of my video work is available on my Vimeo channel at https://vimeo.com/ceciliadougherty.
My video work is archived at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.
My work is distributed by The Video Data Bank in Chicago and the Film-makers’ Cooperative in New York. My web art is archived at and distributed by Cyland Video Archive.
Interactive Fiction / IF
Recent works include two projects of Interactive Fiction, including Time Before Memory (2019) and its sequel, Shanidar, Safe Return (2023). The setting for Time and Shanidar is prehistoric Eurasia. The characters are Cro Magnons and Neanderthals. These interactive stories are speculative fiction, based on my extensive research into the time-period of 40,000 years ago. They include my original drawings and photography, as well as some of my original music compositions.
Drift and Ride
Drift and Ride are interactive photo essays created in 2020. Drift documents a stroll through St. George, my Staten Island neighborhood and is like a trip back in time. A lot of Staten Island neighborhoods have been stuck for decades, most likely due to neglect by developers. Developers are beginning to notice Staten Island, however, and are targeting some nearby neighborhoods for a renewal of dubious quality and purpose.
Ride is about NYC public transit, which became a much less safe option for getting aorund town during the pandemic. The piece is not about options, however. It’s about people-watching. Public transit offers a glimpse of chance encounters, meetings, conversations, New York street style, the mix and mashup of the residents of our city.
Writing
“I learned about writing by reading Georges Perec, the French 1950s-60s chronicler of everyday life. His writings are a lesson in how to escape ideology while keeping a clear head on issues that effect all of us. Issues such as climate change, wealth inequality a.k.a. greed, struggles for racial justice, gender equality and women’s rights, one’s right to bodily autonomy, freedom from war, freedom from religion, and global human rights. I don’t write about those things directly, but there is an inherent connectivity between these things. Perec illustrated ways of observing the present moment openly and freely, without judgment or motive.
“In 2013, my book, called The Irreducible I: Space, Place, Authenticity, and Change, was published by Atropos Press and is based on my doctoral dissertation of the same title. Writing The Irreducible I pushed me out of theoretical thinking and I began to look at the naturally forming connectivities and the pathways to social change available in most situations and circumstances .”
–Cecilia Dougherty
You can read a selection from The Irreducible I here.
The Irreducible I: Space, Place, Authenticity, and Change by Cecilia Dougherty, Atropos Press, 2013. Also available in KINDLE version.
Update on the life of the mural of Biggie Smalls (see page header):
