Dioramas, 2013
Still 'Dioramas', Andrés Pachón Arrones
Using various digital animation techniques, Andrés Pachón reinterprets Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922), Nepal. 8 years criss-crossing roadless Nepal (Toni Hagen, 1950) and Group Hunting on the Spring Ice (Quentin Brown, 1968). The work is built like a kind of collage of the moving image. The mountains behind the Eskimos could well be a backdrop, a diorama or a slide show; or maybe even a cloud so big that it swallows up the explorer... The individuals are cut out from the original images, moving through a space intervened or specifically created for the occasion. The figure seems to be placed in front of a set designed for the theatre or a natural sciences museum. While the original films recorded unknown tribes, they were also filmed with a consciousness of showing something exotic. Today they are like souvenirs or reminders of a form of audio-visual colonialism in which western man looked down on indigenous peoples.
