These screenshots are from a video that is part of an ongoing body of work in which I am exploring the deteriorating state of my family’s native village in Spain. In recent years, much of its population has moved to live in larger cities, leaving it an empty and desolate place. In this video, I explore ways in which I canreactivate the village landscape, bringing life back into its streets. Using a mixture of methods such as singing, dancing and projections, my brothers and I attempt to resurrect the village from its state of despair and neglect. In doing so, I question what this possible new “life” in the village could mean, whether it will be human or something other.

Wandering around the village at night, me and my brothers dance and leap, attempting to awaken this new life. Using light and paper from which I have torn out the shapes of various animals such as fish, birds and horses, I cast shadows onto the walls of buildings. These shadow animals become the new inhabitants of the village, giving hope for the village’s future beyond that of the human. The video also celebrates the presence of a stray cat which unintentionally became part of many of my shots while filming. Deciding to incorporate the animal into my work, it takes on the role as a guide or guardian of the village. Its presence demonstrates that although void of humans life, the “animal other” has come to make the village its home, allowing the landscape to emancipate itself from the human whist remaining alive. This video should be read as a spell, as a dream through which we can reimagine the intertwining of the human and the animal in our surroundings and explore ways in which the animal becomes a form of rebirth in the face of an otherwise barren place.

This accompanying image is the inverted image of a print which consists of the layering of two images. One is the paper cut out used for creating shadows on the walls of my family’s village, and the other is a drawing of some of my memories of the village.