Sculpture Spirit Mediums Video

One Lincoln After Another

Chris Kubick and Anne Walsh
Archive
02/12/2009 - 08/31/2009

Artists Chris Kubick and Anne Walsh work together collaboratively on historically-based multimedia work under the name Archive.

Archive’s work has included performance lectures, spoken word CDs, video games, exhibitions, and works on paper. Archive presents “One Lincoln After Another,” finding Abe through short webisodes involving spirit mediums, photographs of Lincoln documents, sculptures made from Lincoln’s death mask, a Lincoln “presenter,” and a trip to several Lincoln monuments, including one in Tijuana, Mexico.

Kubrick and Walsh met William Peck, an Abraham Lincoln “presenter,” at the statue of Benito Juarez in San Diego, on a beautiful October afternoon. The statue was given to the American government by the Mexican government in memory of the relationship between Lincoln and Juarez.


They spent several hours videotaping and interviewing William in full Lincoln costume. He’s a lovely man, with a serious commitment to living and teaching Lincoln’s ideals. As he tells it, his involvement with Lincoln was due to a chance encounter: a child mistook him for Mr. Lincoln one day. It seems to have changed his outlook on life profoundly. Though he makes appearances at all sorts of functions - from Civil War reenactments to Jack Kemp campaign stops to historical society fundraisers, he is most committed to performing in schools, for 5th-8th graders. He does it, as he says, “for the kids.”

This project was funded by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Heritage Philadelphia Program with additional support from the Marketing Innovation Program. Additional support has come from the Samuel S. Fels Fund and The Raab Collection.

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