KAOS Theory

Kaos Theory: The Afrokosmic Ark of Ben Caldwell tells the story of Ben Caldwell, an avant-garde filmmaker, photographer, multimedia artist, educator, and community arts activist in Los Angeles. He first gained national and international attention in the late 1970s as a member of the L.A. Rebellion Film Movement, a collective of Black filmmakers whose array of collaborative, experimental, community-centered, and African-diasporic informed practices pushes the bounds of cinema. In 1984, Caldwell founded KAOS Network, a multimedia art and technology accelerator, performance site, and educational space located in the heart of Leimert Park Village, a historic center for Black and Afro-diasporic cultures in South Central Los Angeles. In these spaces and community networks, Caldwell has devoted his life to cultivating creative practices and community formation and artmaking across a wide swath of media, technology, and modes of performance: photography, experimental film and video, public access television, telecommunications, multimedia performance art, hip-hop music and spoken word, and new media digital technologies. Within his seventy-five years of life and creativity is an ever-expanding universe of creative collaborations, relationships, intergenerational networks, and Black cultural traditions that he has helped steward. KAOS Theory shows how the creative and communal contributions of Caldwell, the KAOS Network community, and many others are all vibrating elements in a wide diasporic urban and desert-based Black avant-garde. Kaos Theory highlights the significant contributions made by these people and groups to film, underground Black music and performance arts, and cultures of Los Angeles, the U.S. Southwest, and beyond.