Image Description: Video still from 5 minute 16 mm film. Close-up of golden sequin and black stripped pattern fabric and a golden Precolombian figurine and several small glass bottles at the top of the image. The frame is a film still and the golden objects all appear to have a bluish tint.

Through the making of this film, I’ve become invested in the politics of free trade between Colombia and the United States as a state sanctioned form of colonial extraction. This 16mm experimental film depicts objects made from discarded materials and features a portal device, the ‘Matriz’ made of hemp burlap coffee sacks. Matriz in spanish translates to womb and matrix like that on a loom, the khoratic space of beginnings. In the film the golden ghost, echo, crash lands on an industrial rooftop and wanders around, encountering more golden trash, textiles and other missing parts to fix his portal device. echo represents the how the legacies of gold mining carry on through other materials and processes such as the continued excavation of natural resources that are seemingly less violent than the coal/oil/meat/coca industries such as coffee and textiles. While gold has become a symbol of western sovereignty, this production of its accumulated value (and reproduction) has always come about through the dependency on forced labor.

Cinematography by Devin Utah
Sound score by Jess Saldaña