Muñoz created this film in Haiti and Puerto Rico as a meditative reflection on a fundamental metaphysical subject: human awareness of time and space. Muñoz took inspiration from a technique in Sanskrit poetry called ślesa, in which two distinct stories are narrated at once. The film tracks Haitian playwright Guy Regis Junior (born 1974) as he discusses translating the classic 20th-century novel by Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, from French into Haitian Kreyol. This account is intertwined with a monologue by Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli (born 1956) about the meaning of time and the possibility of many “nows” unfolding at once. The film hints throughout at connections between disparate places and events, as well as the ways that a linear understanding of time limits our understanding of the world’s dynamic complexities.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: The Crow, the Trench, and the Mare is curated by Antawan I. Byrd, associate curator of Photography and Media, Art Institute of Chicago, and assistant professor of Art History, Northwestern University; Adom Getachew, Professor of Political Science and Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity, University of Chicago; and Matthew S. Witkovsky, vice president for strategic art initiatives and Sandor Chair of Photography and Media, Art Institute of Chicago.
