I IDENTIFY AS

video
10.54

With I Identify as, Kruithof explores fluid identities between human, nature and technology. The video work presents a critical perspective on ever changing and ambivalent concepts, where kinships with more-than-human collide with exploitative language, gesture and human centric cultures. Featuring a mashup of morphing images, sounds and voices, the video evokes a non linear narrative of identities in question, weaving human and plant worlds through multitude of perspectives. Scenes feature individuals and groups in plant-disguise in conflicting parallel to those in “Ecouture” costumes made from plants, dancing, parading, and connecting with their surroundings. These costumes may symbolize a celebration of plant life, offering a critique of fast fashion and consumerism, while sat- irizing humanity’s exploitative role in the Anthropocene, where plant-like camouflage serves manly fantasies of hunt, violence and profit. Blending self-shot footage from the Amazon with internet phenomena and AI-enhanced imagery, the work a ternates human skin with plant textures, suggesting a gradual transformation where people shed human exceptionalism to become one with the natural world.

Loosely drawing on the idea of the “Plantroposcene”, a fictional era where plants and AI re- shape humanity’s role in nature, the video critiques human exceptionalism and imagines a world where humans become intertwined with the plant king- dom. Inspired by Glenn Albrecht’s “Symbiocene” and Natasha Myers’ “Plant(O)scene”, the work gently fantasizes a symbiotic future where technology supports and augments ecological well-being rather than dominance.

direction, video, text: Anouk Kruithof
edit: Johanna Gibbs & Anouk Kruithof
AI animation: akvae
color correction: Nicola Perret
sound: Nihiloxica
sound mixing: Johanna Gibbs & Anouk Kruithof
sound mastering: Ivna Jurkovic