Marcello Rollando talks Headlines Are Frontlines with Filmmaker Smriti Keshari

Starting the day after the 2016 election, Smriti Keshari collected one headline per day from The New York Times that related to Trump’s presidency. At first, the headlines were like bullet points that helped her recall what happened the day before. This routine became a ritual, and soon, a multimedia art - a two-hour film and music art installation comprising 1,460 headlines, titled Disintegration.

Concentric art circles draw Keshari and music producer Marius de Vries to Matthew Herbert, who has spent the last 25 years questioning all aspects of the sound world. Together they imagined combining the headlines and music to become Disintegration. Herbert’s original composition for Disintegration is based on a distorted, slowed-down version of The Star-Spangled Banner.  

Disintegration brings news headlines, originally consumed on small screens, to massive ones that overpower our consciousness — not unlike the very headlines they display. Its impact is three-fold: it reminds us of the narratives we have read; it offers insight into the parasitic grasp that media have on our collective attention; and, it haunts our psyche with forgotten headlines that once made front-page news.

Disintegration is a one-of-a-kind of art piece that will live on in many different incarnations, with this one - its first - as a mobile art installation called “HEADLINES ARE FRONTLINES” to share with the public.