James Benning (b. 1942, US) is a filmmaker, actor and visual artist. In the late 1960s he started producing short experimental films that investigated figurative narrative modes. The durational effects in his work often shift viewers’ experience of time in relation to a specific space, which can unfold through autobiographical, cultural, political and historical perspectives. His explorations of place and landscape, race, personal history and collective memory are unified by a characteristic formal rigour. Benning’s philosophy of “Looking and Listening” manifests in the performative, sculptural, architectural and pictorial components of his works, challenging viewers’ habitual ways of seeing.