Taryn Simon: The stories behind the bloodlines

54,853 views ・ 2012-04-18

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00:16
This is Shivdutt Yadav,
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and he's from Uttar Pradesh, India.
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Now Shivdutt was visiting the local land registry office
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in Uttar Pradesh,
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and he discovered
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that official records were listing him as dead.
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His land was no longer registered
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in his name.
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His brothers, Chandrabhan and Phoolchand,
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were also listed as dead.
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Family members had bribed officials
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to interrupt the hereditary transfer of land
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by having the brothers declared dead,
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allowing them to inherit
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their father's share of the ancestral farmland.
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Because of this, all three brothers and their families
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had to vacate their home.
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According to the Yadav family,
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the local court has been scheduling a case review
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since 2001,
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but a judge has never appeared.
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There are several instances in Uttar Pradesh
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of people dying
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before their case is given a proper review.
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Shivdutt's father's death and a want for his property
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led to this corruption.
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He was laid to rest in the Ganges River,
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where the dead are cremated along the banks of the river
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or tied to heavy stones and sunk in the water.
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Photographing these brothers
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was a disorienting exchange
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because on paper they don't exist,
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and a photograph is so often used as an evidence of life.
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Yet, these men remain dead.
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This quandary led to the title of the project,
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which considers in many ways
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that we are all the living dead
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and that we in some ways represent
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ghosts of the past and the future.
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So this story is the first of 18 chapters
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in my new body of work titled "A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters."
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And for this work,
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I traveled around the world over a four-year period
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researching and recording bloodlines
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and their related stories.
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I was interested in ideas surrounding fate
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and whether our fate is determined
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by blood, chance or circumstance.
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The subjects I documented
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ranged from feuding families in Brazil
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to victims of genocide in Bosnia
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to the first woman to hijack an airplane
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and the living dead in India.
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In each chapter, you can see the external forces
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of governance, power and territory or religion
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colliding with the internal forces
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of psychological and physical inheritance.
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Each work that I make
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is comprised of three segments.
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On the left are one or more portrait panels
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in which I systematically order
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the members of a given bloodline.
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This is followed by a text panel, it's designed in scroll form,
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in which I construct
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the narrative at stake.
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And then on the right is what I refer to as a footnote panel.
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It's a space that's more intuitive
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in which I present fragments of the story,
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beginnings of other stories, photographic evidence.
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And it's meant to kind of reflect
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how we engage with histories or stories on the Internet,
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in a less linear form.
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So it's more disordered.
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And this disorder is in direct contrast
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to the unalterable order of a bloodline.
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In my past projects I've often worked in serial form,
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documenting things that have
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the appearance of being comprehensive
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through a determined title and a determined presentation,
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but in fact, are fairly abstract.
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In this project I wanted to work in the opposite direction
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and find an absolute catalog,
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something that I couldn't interrupt, curate or edit by choice.
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This led me to blood.
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A bloodline is determined and ordered.
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But the project centers
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on the collision of order and disorder --
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the order of blood butting up against the disorder
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represented in the often chaotic and violent stories
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that are the subjects of my chapters.
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In chapter two, I photograph the descendants of Arthur Ruppin.
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He was sent in 1907 to Palestine
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by the Zionist organization
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to look at areas for Jewish settlement
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and acquire land for Jewish settlement.
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He oversaw land acquisition
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on behalf of the Palestine Land Development Company
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whose work led to the establishment
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of a Jewish state.
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Through my research at the Zionist Archives in Jerusalem,
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I wanted to look at the early paperwork
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of the establishment of the Jewish state.
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And I found these maps which you see here.
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And these are studies
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commissioned by the Zionist organization
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for alternative areas for Jewish settlement.
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In this, I was interested in the consequences
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of geography
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and imagining how the world would be different
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if Israel were in Uganda,
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which is what these maps demonstrate.
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These archives in Jerusalem,
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they maintain a card index file
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of the earliest immigrants and applicants for immigration
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to Palestine, and later Israel,
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from 1919 to 1965.
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Chapter three:
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Joseph Nyamwanda Jura Ondijo
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treated patients outside of Kisumu, Kenya
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for AIDS, tuberculosis, infertility,
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mental illness, evil spirits.
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He's most often paid for his services
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in cash, cows or goats.
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But sometimes when his female patients
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can't afford his services,
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their families give the women to Jura
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in exchange for medical treatment.
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As a result of these transactions,
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Jura has nine wives,
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32 children
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and 63 grandchildren.
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In his bloodline you see the children and grandchildren here.
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Two of his wives were brought to him
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suffering from infertility
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and he cured them,
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three for evil spirits,
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one for an asthmatic condition and severe chest pain
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and two wives Ondijo claims he took for love,
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paying their families a total of 16 cows.
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One wife deserted him
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and another passed away during treatment for evil spirits.
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Polygamy is widely practiced in Kenya.
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It's common among a privileged class
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capable of paying numerous dowries
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and keeping multiple homes.
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Instances of prominent social and political figures
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in polygamous relationships
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has led to the perception of polygamy
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as a symbol of wealth, status and power.
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You may notice in several of the chapters that I photographed
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there are empty portraits.
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These empty portraits represent individuals,
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living individuals, who couldn't be present.
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And the reasons for their absence are given in my text panel.
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They include dengue fever,
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imprisonment, army service,
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women not allowed to be photographed
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for religious and cultural reasons.
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And in this particular chapter,
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it's children whose mothers
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wouldn't allow them to travel to the photographic shoot
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for fear that their fathers would kidnap them during it.
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Twenty-four European rabbits
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were brought to Australia in 1859
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by a British settler
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for sporting purposes, for hunting.
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And within a hundred years,
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that population of 24 had exploded to half a billion.
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The European rabbit has no natural predators in Australia,
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and it competes with native wildlife
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and damages native plants
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and degrades the land.
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Since the 1950s,
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Australia has been introducing lethal diseases
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into the wild rabbit population
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to control growth.
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These rabbits were bred at a government facility,
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Biosecurity Queensland,
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where they bred three bloodlines of rabbits
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and have infected them with a lethal disease
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and are monitoring their progress
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to see if it will effectively kill them.
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So they're testing its virulence.
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During the course of this trial, all of the rabbits died,
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except for a few, which were euthanized.
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Haigh's Chocolate,
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in collaboration
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with the Foundation for Rabbit-Free Australia,
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stopped all production of the Easter Bunny in chocolate
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and has replaced it with the Easter Bilby.
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Now this was done to counter
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the annual celebration of rabbits
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and presumably make the public more comfortable
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with the killing of rabbits
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and promote an animal that's native to Australia,
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and actually an animal that is threatened
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by the European rabbit.
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In chapter seven, I focus on the effects
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of a genocidal act
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on one bloodline.
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So over a two-day period,
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six individuals from this bloodline
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were killed in the Srebrenica massacre.
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This is the only work
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in which I visually represent the dead.
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But I only represent those
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that were killed in the Srebrenica massacre,
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which is recorded as the largest mass murder in Europe
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since the Second World War.
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And during this massacre,
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8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys
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were systematically executed.
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So when you look at a detail of this work,
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you can see, the man on the upper-left
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is the father of the woman sitting next to him.
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Her name is Zumra.
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She is followed by her four children,
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all of whom were killed in the Srebrenica massacre.
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Following those four children is Zumra's younger sister
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who is then followed by her children
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who were killed as well.
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During the time I was in Bosnia,
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the mortal remains of Zumra's eldest son
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were exhumed from a mass grave.
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And I was therefore able to photograph
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the fully assembled remains.
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However, the other individuals
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are represented by these blue slides,
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which show tooth and bone samples
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that were matched to DNA evidence collected from family members
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to prove they were the identities
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of those individuals.
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They've all been given a proper burial,
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so what remains are these blue slides
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at the International Commission for Missing Persons.
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These are personal effects
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dug up from a mass grave
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that are awaiting identification from family members
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and graffiti at the Potochari battery factory,
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which was where the Dutch U.N. soldiers were staying,
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and also the Serbian soldiers later
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during the times of the executions.
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This is video footage used at the Milosevic trial,
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which from top to bottom
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shows a Serbian scorpion unit
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being blessed by an Orthodox priest
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before rounding up the boys and men
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and killing them.
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Chapter 15 is more of a performance piece.
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I solicited China's State Council Information Office in 2009
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to select a multi-generational bloodline
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to represent China for this project.
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They chose a large family from Beijing for its size,
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and they declined to give me
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any further reasoning for their choice.
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This is one of the rare situations
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where I have no empty portraits.
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Everyone showed up.
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You can also see the evolution of the one-child-only policy
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as it travels through the bloodline.
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Previously known as the Department of Foreign Propaganda,
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the State Council Information Office
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is responsible for all of China's external publicity operations.
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It controls all foreign media and image production
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outside of China
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from foreign media working within China.
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It also monitors the Internet
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and instructs local media
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on how to handle any potentially controversial issues,
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including Tibet, ethnic minorities,
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Human Rights, religion,
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democracy movements and terrorism.
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For the footnote panel in this work,
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this office instructed me
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to photograph their central television tower in Beijing.
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And I also photographed the gift bag they gave me
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when I left.
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These are the descendants of Hans Frank
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who was Hitler's personal legal advisor
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and governor general of occupied Poland.
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Now this bloodline includes numerous empty portraits,
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highlighting a complex relationship
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to one's family history.
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The reasons for these absences
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include people who declined participation.
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There's also parents who participated
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who wouldn't let their children participate
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because they thought they were too young to decide for themselves.
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Another section of the family
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presented their clothing, as opposed to their physical presence,
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because they didn't want to be identified
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with the past that I was highlighting.
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And finally, another individual
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sat for me from behind
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and later rescinded his participation,
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so I had to pixelate him out so he's unrecognizable.
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In the footnote panel that accompanies this work
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I photographed an official Adolph Hitler postage stamp
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and an imitation of that stamp
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produced by British Intelligence
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with Hans Frank's image on it.
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It was released in Poland
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to create friction between Frank and Hitler,
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so that Hitler would imagine
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Frank was trying to usurp his power.
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Again, talking about fate,
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I was interested in the stories and fate
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of particular works of art.
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These paintings were taken by Hans Frank
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during the time of the Third Reich.
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And I'm interested in the impact of their absence and presence through time.
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They are Leonardo da Vinci's "Lady With an Ermine,"
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Rembrandt's "Landscape With Good Samaritan"
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and Raphael's "Portrait of a Youth,"
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which has never been found.
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Chapter 12 highlights
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people being born into a battle that is not of their making,
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but becomes their own.
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So this is the Ferraz family
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and the Novaes family.
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And they are in an active blood feud.
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This feud has been going on since 1991
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in Northeast Brazil in Pernambuco,
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and it involved the deaths
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of 20 members of the families
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and 40 others associated with the feud,
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including hired hit men, innocent bystanders
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and friends.
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Tensions between these two families date back to 1913
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when there was a dispute over local political power.
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But it got violent in the last two decades
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and includes decapitation
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and the death of two mayors.
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Installed into a protective wall
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surrounding the suburban home of Louis Novaes,
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who's the head of the Novaes family,
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are these turret holes,
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which were used for shooting and looking.
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Brazil's northeast state of Pernambuco
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is one of the nation's most violent regions.
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It's rooted in a principle of retributive justice,
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or an eye for an eye,
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so retaliatory killings
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have led to several deaths in the area.
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This story, like many of the stories in my chapters,
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reads almost as an archetypal episode,
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like something out of Shakespeare,
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that's happening now and will happen again in the future.
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I'm interested in these ideas of repetition.
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So after I returned home, I received word
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that one member of the family
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had been shot 30 times in the face.
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Chapter 17
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is an exploration of the absence of a bloodline
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and the absence of a history.
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Children at this Ukrainian orphanage
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are between the ages of six and 16.
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This piece is ordered by age
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because it can't be ordered by blood.
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In a 12-month period when I was at the orphanage,
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only one child had been adopted.
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Children have to leave the orphanage at age 16,
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despite the fact that there's often nowhere for them to go.
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It's commonly reported in Ukraine
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that children, when leaving the orphanage
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are targeted for human trafficking,
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child pornography and prostitution.
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Many have to turn to criminal activity for their survival,
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and high rates of suicide are recorded.
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This is a boys' bedroom.
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There's an insufficient supply of beds at the orphanage
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and not enough warm clothing.
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Children bathe infrequently
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because the hot water isn't turned on until October.
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This is a girls' bedroom.
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And the director listed the orphanage's most urgent needs
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as an industrial size washing machine and dryer,
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four vacuum cleaners, two computers,
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a video projector, a copy machine,
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winter shoes and a dentist's drill.
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This photograph, which I took at the orphanage of one of the classrooms,
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shows a sign which I had translated when I got home.
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And it reads: "Those who do not know their past
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are not worthy of their future."
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There are many more chapters in this project.
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16:49
This is just an abridged rendering
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of over a thousand images.
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And this mass pile of images and stories
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forms an archive.
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16:58
And within this accumulation of images and texts,
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I'm struggling to find patterns
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and imagine that the narratives that surround the lives we lead
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are just as coded as blood itself.
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But archives exist
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because there's something that can't necessarily be articulated.
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Something is said in the gaps
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between all the information that's collected.
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And there's this relentless persistence
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of birth and death
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and an unending collection of stories in between.
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It's almost machine-like
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the way people are born and people die,
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and the stories keep coming and coming.
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And in this, I'm considering,
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is this actual accumulation
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leading to some sort of evolution,
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or are we on repeat
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over and over again?
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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About this website

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