Dodging
2020Dodging is a 54-second video that depicts the first-person and then the third-person view of an opossum getting hit by a car. I was primarily interested in how bystanders reacted to the road kill; some people stared, others refused to look, but everyone dodged the lifeless body as they drove over or around it. I chose the title Dodging because just like people tried to ignore the opossum, we dodge our responsibility to the planet and all of its living bodies. The video not only allows the viewer to adopt the opossum’s perspective moments before its death, but it also shows the humans refusing to respect its deceased body.
In my interactions with the opossum, I forced myself to look, I didn’t dodge my feelings of sorrow, guilt, and anger. I sat close to their flattened corps for about an hour as I tried to get an acceptable shot, and when I was satisfied, I scraped the body into a cardboard box and disposed of the body in a dumpster. I regretted throwing out the opossum; I got home to my dog, who greeted me with her tail wagging, skull intact, and fur free of tire tracks.
