Ph: Ricardo Andrés Baquero

VILLA WALDBERTA ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE, Munich 2025.

Ravens of consciousness

Two channel video installation, 2025
duration: 00:06:04 min.
link ENG: https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZEWfe5ZGrNOn5MR6OzdERncHeh8DzfTTn2k
link subs SPA : https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZMvxC5Zvzu36BGLLohn0r20NFpMbVuy3wgX

Synopsis: One raven insistently asks the other whether it can, or cannot, talk. The second evades the question, answering in a sly manner and recounting small anecdotes. As the conversation unfolds, it becomes apparent that both ravens are in fact one and the same, and that what is at stake is a call to consciousness and reflection.

Technique and process:
Two-channel 3D video animation, produced during the residency at Villa Waldberta, Munich. This piece continues the talking birds series, in which birds engage in monologues and conversations with a philosophical and ironic tone about human behavior: their relationship with themselves, with nature, and with their modes of interaction in life.

The texts were developed in dialogue with various artificial intelligence platforms, resulting in a hybrid form of writing inscribed within the tradition of surrealist experiments and playful writing practices.

Note: the video can be displayed preferably with two TV screens or two projectors but with one projector as well.

Ph: Ricardo Andrés Baquero

Angel of history
One channel video loop animation, 2025
Duration:  00:04:10 min.
link:  https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZ26fe5ZBUT3dfdj9Bbr7UbHE0Tq8XQJrdLk
link2: https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZ8wg95ZzEIubzkVUHJMOvrt2Gf0DumQKp27

Synopsis: An angel beats its wings, flying in place, in constant motion. Its eyes and mouth remain open as fragments of buildings and architectures shift in superimposition, appearing and disappearing across the landscape. Meanwhile, a song evokes the Angel of History and its relation to progress and the repetition of similar events across distant times.

This video directly references Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History—a metaphor drawn from Paul Klee’s painting Angelus Novus. The image depicts an angel blown backward into the future by the storm of progress, its gaze fixed on the past, where ruin piles upon ruin. Benjamin invoked this figure in his Theses on the Philosophy of History to challenge the idea of inevitable historical progress, proposing instead that history is a catastrophic chain of wreckage which the angel—and humanity—must redeem in order to create a “now-time” of possibility.

At the opening at Villa Waldberta residency, the projection was accompanied by a performance in which the song lyrics were read aloud while moving in circles through the exhibition.

Ph: Randy Yang