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Ganapati/A Spirit in the Bush

Daniel Reeves

1986 00:45:00 United StatesEnglishColor

Description

A song of mourning, praise, and compassion for the sentient creatures with whom we share this planet. Focusing on the myth, history, and natural life of the elephant, the video explores the gulf we have created between ourselves and animals. Powered by the poetry of Lorca, Kipling, and Reeves, this impassioned lament for subjugated and slaughtered elephants earns its polemical stance—a broader relation to inhumanity—by force of its compelling subject matter. Combining location shoots in India, Kenya, and Thailand with disturbing archival footage of an elephant electrocution, Reeves's procession of charged images involves and implicates the viewer through its silently scrolling text: the viewer becomes the narrator, assuming the voices of protaganist, poet, and predator.

About Daniel Reeves

Dan Reeves has worked in sculpture, film, video, and installation since 1970. His videos focus on personal, political, and spiritual themes, from socially condoned violence to the divine nature of existence. Since 1982 Reeves's work has concentrated on developing a video poetics and  exploring personal transformation and responsibility. Reeves’s Buddhist convictions shape not only his content, but direct his commitment to “revitalizing the sacred in art"—making work of universal significance and understanding of the human condition. A remarkable combination of traditional documentary and personnal narrative, his autobiographical tape Smothering Dreams deals with the myths and realities of war through his experience in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive.