Ghosts of the Forest Elephants
GHOSTS OF THE FOREST ELEPHANTS is a video installation created specifically for the Kosmograf in the foyer of the Humboldt Forum. The video tells the story of the last remaining elephant, roaming alone through the native coastal forests of South Africa.
The installation consists of ghostly images of the old elephant trails and fleeting, found footage from infrared cameras that are said to have captured the last elephant. The video regenerates itself using an algorithm that evolves autonomously, much like nature itself: pixels fade and reform, becoming fading echoes of the original image—like the memory of the solitary elephant roaming the paths of its ancestors.
For me, the work is about the colonial legacy in this area in South Africa, where I come from, and the destruction caused by the violence of colonialism, the ghost and the presence and the ephemeral atmospheres that still exist. So that’s really what the film’s about.
It is a generative video installation about absence, ghosts, and the destruction caused by the region’s colonial legacy.
Künstler
Teboho Edkins (b. 1980) grew up in southern Africa and lives and works in Cape Town and Berlin. He studied photography and fine arts at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and film at Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Tourcoing, France. This was followed by studies in film directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). Teboho Edkins’ films have been shown at numerous festivals and in group and solo exhibitions, including at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; Tate Modern in London; Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin; the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale); and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). His films have also been acquired by several public and private art collections, including the Goetz Collection in Munich, the von Kelternborn Collection in Frankfurt, and the KAI 10 | Arthena Collection Foundation in Düsseldorf.