An experimental assemblage of found and original material that explores the role of the moving image in both revealing and shaping human relations with non-human animals. Taking its title from a famous aria in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which has been performed by countless parrots on YouTube, it probes some of the ways in which the camera is used to reduce real animals to abstract objects for human pleasure and knowledge. Through cinema, animals are at our disposal, yet kept safely at a distance, deepening artificial boundaries between human and non-human, nature and culture, and wilderness and civilization.
An experimental assemblage of found and original material that explores the role of the moving image in both revealing and shaping human relations with non-human animals. Taking its title from a famous aria in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which has been performed by countless parrots on YouTube, it probes some of the ways in which the camera is used to reduce real animals to abstract objects for human pleasure and knowledge. Through cinema, animals are at our disposal, yet kept safely at a distance, deepening artificial boundaries between human and non-human, nature and culture, and wilderness and civilization.
Shelby Prichard
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