black strangers, 2022
Single channel video, 8 minutes 13 seconds


Image description: A piece of ragged black fabric draped over barbed wire, against a backdrop of out-of-focus dark forest greenery.

Image credit: Still from black strangers, Dan Guthrie, 2022.

Image description: A pair of brown hands sorts through a pile of folded up eighteenth century documents on a black surface, all of them hand labeled with dates and locations. 

Image credit: Still from black strangers, Dan Guthrie, 2022. 

After seeing him mentioned on a document held in Gloucestershire Archives, Dan goes for a walk in the woods in search of Daniel, a man buried in Nympsfield on the 31st of December 1719 and who was described as ‘a black stranger’. Whilst walking, Dan talks directly to Daniel, speculating about the parallels between him and his namesake and wrestling aloud with the problems that come with trying to read the archive at face value and fill in its gaps.

black strangers was co-commissioned by LUX and the Independent Cinema Office for Right of Way, and is distributed by both LUX and Arsenal. Please contact either of them or the artist directly at dan@danguthrie.net to organise a screening or exhibition of the work.

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