Bless My Hood
2024
Short Film
Featuring Marcus Ramos
Music by Ghais Guevara
Director of Photography Eladio Polanco
Bless My Hood is a video performance of smudging Northern Liberties, a newly gentrified neighborhood in Philadelphia, using 3D-printed peace sign incense holders on Apple Max headphones. The work uses the act of "cleansing" to critique the symbolic and literal transformation of urban spaces, combining symbols of peace with a process tied to purification to interrogate the uncomfortable tension between cultural erasure and renewal that gentrification often brings.
This piece questions who holds the power and the right to redefine a space. Engaging with larger themes of displacement, identity, and the commodification of communities, reflecting on the roles technology and spirituality plays in reshaping urban landscapes.
