@cryptojudaica is a series of short videos juxtaposing edited selections from the Judaica project archive with textual commentary. There are currently more than 200 posts and more are being added over time.
The @cryptojudaica series began to take form at a Video Essay Research conference, hosted by Johannes Binotto in Switzerland in December 2022. Here is a brief explanation of one of the posts, which I produced during a workshop on “photovoice” methodology led by Prakash Krishnan:
Here I juxtapose a video still of my moving, singing body with a square boxed text. I am shown against a white background in a white box studio that has since been closed to usage to save on heating costs. But the whole image is blue shifted as I am trying to escape the sepia nostalgia of diasporic jewish identity work and find an alternative futurity that is non-zionist and more inspired by afrofuturism. The text box shape references the structure of a page of ancient jewish scholarship (called Talmud), while its content cites Katherine McKittrick, a Canadian Black studies scholar, on the need for black methods that are radical yet not completely undisciplined.