Hydra Decapita

Year2010 Duration31 min. DirectorThe Otolith Group

In the essayistic mediation of "Hydra Decapita", the dehumanization of chattel slavery metamorphoses into a speculative space of posthuman possibility. The Otolith Group (Kodwo Eshun and Angalika Sagar) reactivate the mythos of the 1990s Detroit techno group Drexciya, who imagined that the unborn children of drowned pregnant slaves would mutate and be able to live underwater. In the words of Eshun, this science fiction involves “nothing less than a reimagining of the biopolitical atrocity of the Middle Passage.” Images of the ocean’s surface, references to J.M.W. Turner’s 1840 painting of the Zong massacre, The Slave Ship, and the work of an invented transcriber who listens for “silent voices” resonate together, creating a constellation that is at once a requiem and a reparative fiction that looks forward to a future of more liveable lives. 

Back to list

Promoted by
Gobierno de Navarra
Organized by
NICDO
With the aid of
Con la financiación del Gobierno de España. Instituto de la Cinematografía y las Artes Audiovisuales Acción Cultural Española Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia Financiado por la Unión Europea. NexGenerationEU
volver_arriba

We use our own and third-party cookies for the following purposes:

To change the cookies settings that are installed on your computer, check or uncheck the different options and then click the "Save preferences" button.
By clicking the "Accept all cookies" option, you consent to the installation of all cookies.
Likewise, by clicking the "Reject cookies" option, you reject the use of all of them.
Click here to obtain more information about our cookies policy.