Ganapati/A 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, the video explores the gulf we have created between ourselves and animals. 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.