the
monarch
2021SINGLE-CHANNEL 2K VIDEO, COLOUR, STEREO SOUND, 8 MIN 53 SEC. PRODUCED WITH THE SUPPORT OF OGR-OFFICINE GRANDI RIPARAZIONI TORINO WITH VISIO/LO SCHERMO DELL'ARTE.
cut-outs of butterflies photographs, which I took at the natural history museum in london the year I moved there as a student, float to the rhythm of a hypnotic remix of words and sounds, sampled from queen elizabeth II’s christmas speeches broadcast in the ten years since. the video-work condenses the intensity and insecurity permeating the socio-political events that have characterised the last decade into a baroque and tragicomic narrative, as vacuous and subtle as the original one. the cut-out butterflies, ironically missing the famous monarch species, are animated as if there is no gravity, in a suspended time, both dead and alive. alongside the queen’s voice, sampled and re-arranged into a speech of speeches, shifting ages and genders, dead and alive.
STILLS FROM VIDEO; EXCERPT FROM SCORE.