I am my best work — a series of road maps, reports, recipes, doodles, and prayers from the front lines.
Audre Lorde
THE INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY OF VALERIE CAESAR
Self-portraiture has been at the heart of my work from adolescence, taking many forms — photography, illustration, animation, and video. The Institutional Memory of Valerie Caesar is a documentary collection, featuring selected aspects of my life, and interspersed with short film selections in the style of The Book of Small Black Stories.
These five volumes — My So-Called Quarantined Life (2020), The New Normal (2021), Doodles From the Front Lines (2022), In A Fucking Nutshell (2023), and At This Point (2024) — deliver the truth of my heart’s heart, mundane and unafraid, through video art and poetry. They’re an alchemy of my dry humor, urban angst, omniscient narration, and personal, impish observation, and are a variety show gleaned from long meandering walks, cooking explorations, and smoking reveries. The Institutional Memory of Valerie Caesar is my personal archive; my dear diary; a time capsule of my mind’s eye. Object of street ephemera become tools of divination; metaphor is meditation — all sublimated through a divinely paired, mellow soundtrack of lo-fi and old school hip hop, jazz and other genres of Black music. It’s a vibe. It’s my life, shared with you. Find out how you can check it out below.
Let’s explore the currency of vulnerability, y’all.
To access my film archive, please share a truth or a memory, a dream or a story. Basically, show me yours and I'll show you mine. There's no judgment either. I just want to be vulnerable with you.I also accept other forms of currency, though.
If you'd rather just pay to play, I love that too! I love it more. With your one-time purchase, you will receive access to my monthly growing personal archive of documentary videos and other exclusive content. It's a great value, as videos are added every month.