City Archives

1978, 28:16 min, color, sound

Foreman produced City Archives, a labyrinthine collage of image and language, at the invitation of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The tape centers on the perspective of an outsider — the foreigner as Other — towards a city and its artifacts. Foreman's signature visual and verbal puns and carefully composed compositions result in an often humorous dialogue on the role of documents as evidence, and the relationship of text and image. While questioning the positions from which one views information, Foreman constructs and then deconstructs the central metaphor of an archive as a receptacle of information and knowledge.

Camera: Marty Walter. Sound: Paul Shreve. With: Maja Bjornson, Jim Cada, Richard Foreman. Produced by the Walker Art Center/Minnesota Public Programming Corporation.