As If It Were Raining

online project, non-looped gifs, 2018

 
 

There were so many little tadpoles in the pond. They were feeding off the algae and when we’d pick up a clump (we were using our hands with rubber gloves) we’d have to shake it and let the little guys swim down and back into the water.

There was so much of it and it was climbing up all the roots of the pads and suffocating the lily flowers. Most were rotten but at one point she freed one and it opened up a little, all pink inside. I accidentally lent on a dried tadpole on the edge of the pond. Apparently most of them get picked off by birds and then the surviving ones go over to the golf course to live their lives because there’s a bigger pond there. I guess this frog had grown up here and returned to have her babies. The algae went really deep. Eventually we started to use sticks to swirl the water in the depths and pull up more goo. When we were done the only stuff left was stuck to the walls of the pond, so all the little tadpoles were attached along the edges, eating it.

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As if it were raining is an internet based artwork originally commissioned for the Sister Gallery online space. It uses gifs of myself in different locations in Santiago and Valparaíso, Chile, to explore the impact that silenced stories and emotions of political violence can imbue on future generations.