RHIZOM
Marc Bertel
Everything Is Everythang

Featuring the Austrian artist’s extended family and friends in South (formerly South Central) Los Angeles, this film is the culmination of On Our Time, a project Marc Bertel has been developing in and around the neighborhood of Watts for the past nine years. Following a chance encounter, he had been welcomed into the midst of the local Baker/Drayton family and accepted as one of their own. This deep bond, transcending race and class, subsequently became the fertile ground for a series of interconnected films, publications, drawings, and interventions.

While the film is mainly conceived as a celebration of the community that became Marc’s second home, the project at large asks how an art practice that doesn’t mirror prevalent systems of oppression and extraction—which the global art market also partakes in—can be established. How can the artist create works featuring his adopted family and friends without exploiting a culture that is not his own? And most importantly, what can be given back that is of value to the Bakers/Draytons and representative of the love and care he received?