Peter Nicks’ “Oakland Trilogy”

In his documentary trilogy, Peter Nicks explores the structurality of political and social issues by placing cameras inside and outside three government institutions in the City of Oakland, California: The Waiting Room (2012) depicts 24 hours of work and life at the Highland Hospital. The Force (2017) investigates the Oakland Police Department over two years, and Homeroom (2021) accompanies a graduating class at Oakland High.

This essay considers Nicks’ films as audiovisual participants in the #blacklivesmatter discourse, which discusses racism, classism, and sexism as structural issues. As such, these issues are only visible through symptoms of an invisible structure that allows them to pertain and to be (re)produced. This essay asks how film, as an audio visual medium, relates to the in/visibility of structural issues.

Analyzing Nicks’ trilogy chronologically, the essay demonstrates how these films explore a particular mode of audiovisual experience. They enable a reflection upon structural racism not through an attempted visualization of invisible structures but through affects of Unbehagen , allowing for an audiovisual experience that reflects upon issues of framing the in/visible.