Jesse McLean

Bearing Witness is a trilogy concerned with how we, as a culture, watch ourselves, especially in moments of great emotional significance. With footage culled from mainstream media and television, the single-channel videos (The Eternal Quarter Inch, Somewhere only we know, The Burning Blue) distill moments of sincerity from perhaps insincere sources (televangelists, reality show contestants, screensavers, B-movies). The three single-channel videos each witness interstitial moments of imminence to challenge spectatorship in American televisual culture, continually shifting the role of the viewer between voyeur and participant.