Incident by Bill Morrison | Museum of the Moving Image, Queens, New York
Best Things I Saw in 2024
In the opening moments of Bill Morrison’s short film Incident (2023), we observe an ostensibly ordinary Chicago street on a summer afternoon, mediated by the sanitized perspective of a security camera. Pedestrians traverse the sidewalk in unhurried arcs; a police vehicle waits idly; the midday sunlight appears indifferent. A seagull floats through the frame, suggesting the transience of a passing instant. This scene, prolonged in silence, conveys an almost banal quality of one snapshot among the myriad images captured and archived by contemporary surveillance technologies.
Suddenly, a fracture: Harith Augustus moves between cars, collapses in the street, and sound floods in. Sirens, shouting, agitation. The prone figure is surrounded by officers who offer no assistance. Soon after, body-camera footage replaces the static calm of the security feed, and the camera is no longer a neutral observer. Instead, it belongs to the officers at the focal point of this quickly escalating encounter. Augustus, a Black man, lies shot and killed by the police, and Incident immerses us in the raw aftermath. The jarring transition from the mute calm of the security feed to the din of law enforcement’s lens signals both a rupture in the film’s surface and, more profoundly, the end of one reality and the onset of another.
Incident offers a mosaic of vantage points on a state-sanctioned act of violence, one that was quickly subsumed by official narratives. Body-camera feeds, dash-cam footage, and CCTV clips reveal multiple versions of the same story, pushing against any single, authoritative telling. And yet, it is Morrison’s structure—his deliberate montage and his choice to let entire sections remain unsettlingly quiet—that makes the viewer’s own reaction a part of the film’s sonic tapestry. When I viewed the piece at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, the audience, stirred by moral discomfort, grief, or shock, provides a spontaneous score that underlines the harrowing weight of what is seen.
Building on this convergence of personal reaction and formal technique, the film offers not only a testament to Augustus’s final moments but also a critique of how institutions and communities construct and reshape meaning around visual evidence. One perceives that the impulse to explain the shooting, whether by law enforcement, media outlets, or the general public, often distorts, rather than clarifies, the underlying facts. Incident exemplifies Morrison’s longstanding interest in archival and discarded footage, but here the material does not derive from a historical archive; it emanates from a digital ecosystem in which every instant is documented. Although such documentation ostensibly promises transparency and accountability, Morrison’s editing reveals that it can also serve as a mechanism of obfuscation, particularly when authorities determine how, and in what context, footage is presented.
Rather than a singular, cohesive account, what ensues is a fractured lens of perspectives. Morrison’s characteristic skill in collating rare and often ephemeral sources functions as an instrument for interrogating institutional power and its dependence on visual record. Public officials, media representatives, and law-enforcement personnel each contend for interpretive control, seeking to brandish certain images as irrefutable evidence. Yet Morrison’s montage renders such proof unsettlingly ambiguous. It reveals the ease with which narratives may be contorted—how the same occurrence can generate divergent conclusions, merging and dissolving in an uneasy mosaic of partial truths.
Crucially, Incident does not simply identify heroes or villains; rather, it exposes the social mechanisms that operate when a police shooting is captured on camera. Footage that might otherwise remain withheld or streamlined into a concise official report is reorganized to heighten awareness of how seemingly neutral or objective images become tools of persuasion and power. A police officer’s voice in one moment presses for a specific reading of the chaos, attempting to command the story, while a brief clip in another context contradicts that interpretation. These tensions infuse every frame, illuminating not only the tragedy of a life taken but also the tragedy of a system unwilling to confront its own complicity.
A further layer emerges through the motif of officers’ hands, and the disquieting lack of touch that might signify care or humanity. In Incident, the only significant physical contact with Augustus occurs when an officer cuffs his motionless wrists, laying bare the gulf between procedural force and the possibility of empathy. Such absence of compassionate touch stands in stark contrast to philosophical explorations of tactility as an affirmation of self and Other. As noted in my own work, “[t]ouch operates not merely as a physical interaction but as an affirmation of our own embodiment and the existence of the Other, a paradoxical phenomenon where atomic repulsion gives way to corporeal connection.” The ontology of touch thereby transcends mere sensory input; it signals a relational bond that can either foster care or confirm violent neglect. In denying Augustus the acknowledgment of touch, the officers’ hands become a stark reminder of what is at stake when tactile connections are forfeited—an absence that underscores the systemic refusal to recognize Augustus as fully human.
Sartre alludes to this complexity in Being and Nothingness when he describes the caress not as mere contact but as a shaping of the Other’s flesh. In such a view, to touch another is to co-create a mutual space of recognition—an act that can confirm humanity as much as it can deny it. In Incident, however, the fleeting appearance of officers’ hands serves primarily to constrain or to secure, exposing the stark absence of humane gestures that might otherwise acknowledge Augustus’s personhood. Touch and embodied presence demand a processual engagement with the Other that is actively refused here. In capturing both what is done and left undone, Incident highlights the ominous void where one would expect humanity, solace, or care.
Throughout the film, Morrison emphasizes a disconcerting reality: we are perpetually both watchers and watched. The once-passive surveillance camera has captured a lethal incident that demands ethical scrutiny, while the very officers entrusted with public safety now face examination by means of their own devices. This phenomenon reflects a broader condition of contemporary life: whenever an event is recorded, opposing impulses to mask and disclose arise. Incident incisively interrogates this dilemma, offering an unfiltered perspective on how narratives are constructed the moment they enter public view.
In this sense, Morrison’s work extends beyond its immediate subject, illustrating the ways in which images and counterimages, truth claims and counternarratives, unfold simultaneously in a rapidly evolving digital environment. Incident thus operates as a compressed parable of this ecosystem, one in which any official story is precarious, continuously exposed to the unpredictable testimonial of parallel viewpoints. In its profoundly affecting manner, the film insists that the ultimate cost of these clashing narratives is frequently borne by individuals who never consented to become part of the footage.
When considered in conjunction with Morrison’s broader oeuvre, Incident functions as both historical record and analytical commentary. It issues a stark reminder that being caught on tape guarantees neither fairness nor understanding. Amid the interplay of editorial decisions, truncated perspectives, and insistent voices, Morrison uncovers an unsettling principle: the camera’s gaze illuminates as much as it obscures, and the significance of what it reveals depends, in large part, on who wields the authority to interpret its evidence.
Michèle Saint-Michel is an artist, filmmaker, and writer whose interdisciplinary practice examines power, feminist ecologies, and somatic memory. Drawing on influences from feminist film theory, quantum mechanics, and dark ecology, her works blend analog and digital media to create layered, multi-sensory experiences.
Time-based works include: 21 Scores for Losing Yourself in a Body, a multi-temporal installation blending silk prints, hand-processed 16mm film, and somatic event scores; PTSD Suite, a nonlinear documentary series exploring the fragmented realities of life in the after; and collaborations with poets like Nora Nadjarian and Luke Kennard, and musicians like Hermon Mehari, Sophie Stone, Arun Sood, Sheena Dham, and Peter Flint.
In addition, Saint-Michel has authored four books, three journals, and a coloring book that reflect her commitment to engaging critical and poetic frameworks. She runs the monthly feedback group Artist Film Club (January sign-ups here) and is a film programmer at Millennium Film Workshop in Brooklyn, NY. Find more on her website and follow her on social media.