Francisca Duran

Francisca Duran is a Chilean-Canadian experimental media artist who creates films, video installation, and 2D, photo-based, mixed-media works about history, memory and violence. Duran has exhibited internationally at film festivals and venues including Edinburgh International Film Festival, International Film Festival at Rotterdam, HotDocs, Arkipel, Anthology Film Archives, Los Angeles Film Forum, John Hansard Gallery and Gallery 44. Duran holds an M.F.A. from York University and a B.A.H. from Queen’s University. Her practice has been supported by research, travel, and production grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.

It Matters What | 9 minutes | 16mm and HD | 2019

Described Video below

Absences and translations motivate this experimental animation in an exploration of the methods and materials of reproduction and inscription. The inquiry is set within a framework of practical and critical human relationships with other-than-human-species elucidated by the theorist Donna Haraway.

A fragment from Haraway’s essay Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene is reworked here as a poetic manifesto. Enigmatic found-footage calls into question human violence over animal species. Plant life is both the subject matter of the images and assists the means of photographic reproduction.

The techniques used include in-camera animation, contact-prints and phytograms created by the exposure of 16mm film overlaid with plant material and dried for hours in direct sunlight.