(Our feet, just now so swift, hold fast in resistant roots)
12:35 min 3D animated short film. 2022.
short overview. please contact me for full video link.
The mythological story of Daphne is the first plant transformation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, one of the most influential literary works of Western culture. The story is also one of the earliest written records mentioning attempted sexual violence ever. How to view the mythology of the transformation of the body into a plant in a contemporary context framed by rape culture and the constant attempts of politicians to control bodily autonomy? How to reflect on the mythological narrative thematizing the transformation of human body into a plant in times of climate catastrophe? We need a new mythology, informed by the history of violence from which it emerges, but not resigned to the search for a new sensitivity to more-than-human. A botanical metamorphosis that is not an act of silencing, but its opposite. An act of plant resistance. The roots growing around Daphne's body, in changing the optics to that of a plant being, are thus no longer an act of domination as presented in the original myth.
CREDITS: soundscape: Andrej Žabkay, video editing: Vladimíra Vrbiňáková, voice-over: NaiKavols
Ctrl + ↑ for Coyote Time, Trafó Galéria, Budapest, HU, 2024. Photo by Máté Kalicz.
Whoever settles down in a perfect place will have to move, GLASSBOX, Paris, France. 2023.
This project was Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.