by any other name

2008, 3 min, 16mm/ video, color

Through found footage re-enacting Spanish colonialism and with imagery of sloths held captive in a zoo, by any other name interrogates the act of naming and its relationship to meaning. Indigenous to South America but named by western imperialism, sloth the animal becomes a metaphor in the film for indigenous persons of the same continent. Would these slow-moving, peaceful herbivores or subjugated peoples everywhere throughout time, by any other name, be anything other than animal or human?

Curated for:

“The Animal in Me” at The Flickering Light, Philadelphia PA, 2009
ANIMANIMAL/ MAMMAL/ MANIMAL  at Light Industry, Brooklyn NY, 2008