A Ganapati/ Spirit In The Bush

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 and its relationship to man, the tape explores the gulf which we have created between ourselves and animals by the devaluation and calculated exploitation of other forms of life. The question is asked: what has been gained and lost in the pursuit of eternal growth and unlimited material development? 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.