video

Paisley Rekdal presents from West: A Translation (2023), a documentary hybrid work centered on the Transcontinental Railroad, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and racism in America. Rekdal shares video poems from the book's companion website and reads the essays corresponding to those poems. She shapes her reading around topics selected by the audience: labor, Mormons, Chinese death rituals, Robert Smithson (creator of Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake), the biracial experience, prostitution, and Hollywood's portrayal of women and the railroad.