Biography
Keith Wilson is a filmmaker and visual artist based in San Francisco. His films have been exhibited at Sundance, the Berlinale, South by Southwest, documenta and the U.S. National Gallery of Art. He is a 2018 Mediamaker Fellow at the Bay Area Video Coalition and a member-owner of the distribution cooperative New Day Films. In addition to solo photography shows in Georgia, Texas and California, his artist book EVERY BUILDING ON BURNET [burn-it] ROAD was exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery and the Brandhorst Museum in Munich, Germany. Keith has an MFA in film production from the Radio-TV-Film Department at UT-Austin and grew up on a cul-de-sac in suburban Atlanta.
Research
The Most Beautiful Beach is a research-based multimedia project about the intersection of architecture, marketing, land use policy and climate change in Panama City Beach, Florida. With it’s official motto of “the World’s Most Beautiful Beaches,” Panama City Beach, is a popular vacation, retirement and spring break destination, particularly for sunseekers in the American South and Midwest. In the early 2000s, a series of federal, state and local land use policy and financial industry changes led to a construction boom that continues to alter the city’s coastline. With names like Chateau on the Sea, The Osprey, The Seychelles, and Hidden Dunes, these buildings’ architecture and naming conventions attempt to evoke leisure, luxury, the exotic and an ability to be at one with the natural world. What none of their branding does, however, is call attention to the site’s history, demography or ecological threats due to sea-level rise and climate change. The Most Beautiful Beach will combine archival research, audio interviews, photographic essays and text-based analysis to better understand the many forces, systems and policies that shape the built environment along Panama City Beach. Using the nomenclature of the beachfront properties as a starting point, the project will investigate the role of marketing and advertising in luring tourists, retirees and investors. These branding efforts will also guide research into the area’s history, including an emphasis on native american populations and the settler colonial populations that displaced them.
