RETURN ON NO RETURN

2022

Descend into a liminal space, the point of transition between breaths. In this enmeshment of space and time, there is no forwards or back. No you divisible from it. Everything is now. You are everything. A specter, suffused with open wounds beyond your own. You join the haunting - present for the last feeble attempts to resuscitate a dead world. This is the point of beginning - the end.

Produced at The School of Making Thinking’s VR Immersion 4.0 residency, in Wilmington, NC, Summer 2022

With gratitude for the contributions, assistance, and permission of: The School of Making Thinking, Raymond Mott & the brothers of Giblem Lodge, Travis Gilbert - director of the Historic Wilmington Foundation, and fellow SMT residents brandon King, Maria Barbist & McLean Fahnestock

6:42 min, 360 degree video

THIS IS A 360 FILM. FOR OPTIMAL VIEWING, WATCH ON YOUR SMART PHONE.

INSTRUCTIONS BELOW

INSTRUCTIONS FOR 360 VIDEO PLAYBACK:

  • scan QR code on your phone or open this page in your phone browser & press “watch on youtube,” above

  • video will automatically play - hold your phone horizontally and move it around to see all angles

  • Volume up!

  • IF YOU HAVE A VR HEADSET FOR PHONE USAGE: follow the above, then tap your phone screen to pull up youtube buttons. Tap the stereoscopic viewer button (viewfinder logo) in the bottom right, then put phone in the headset and watch.

 

As part of my research for this project, I spoke with Travis Gilbert, director of the Historic Wilmington Foundation, about Wilmington’s history, it’s preservation, and the contentious aspects of both, as well as and the Foundation’s role in supporting the revitalization of historically underserved Black spaces, especially Giblem Lodge - the second oldest Black Masonic Lodge in North Carolina. The brothers of the Lodge are currently working to renovate the space, with the assistance of HWF and Third Person Project.

Below is a map showing the locations of all of the sites shown in RETURN ON NO RETURN. A large part of the School of Making Thinking residency was dedicated to researching the town’s history, which includes the only successful coup d'état in history of the United States - the Wilmington coup and massacre of 1898, in which white supremacists overthrew the duly elected Fusionist biracial government, murdered or ran out of town many of the town’s Black inhabitants, and burned down the Daily Record, a Black newspaper who’s editor, Alex Manly, had angered Whites by objecting to the stereotyping of Black men as rapists of White women. Manly escaped with his life, but many did not (the true death toll is unknown).

For more information, check out Christopher Everett’s film, Wilmington on Fire and WilmingtoNColor