ARTISTS

Ken Okiishi sees his work emerging from a lineage of experimental filmmaking, centered on New York’s Anthology Film Archives, where artists, he says, “invented a new medium with the video camera.” In Brian at Home, Okiishi explores the possibilities of Zoom as a medium through a series of absurdist experiments that he conducted with his titular subject, an actor, during the pandemic. In one sequence, Brian reads from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days (1961), while in another he meditates through hyperventilation. Viewers watch these little Zoom performances, recorded on smartphones and laptops, complete with familiar moments of disconnection: calls drop, communication is uncertain. Okiishi also visits Brian in person to film the actor giving an extended tour of his luxe apartment complex in Brooklyn. As it addresses life in quasi-isolation, the film treats banality and desire in equal measure.