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ɦσɱε

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2023.2024




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DIRECTOR STATEMENT

Queer sexuality is strange.

It gestates enveloped in shame and fear that is inextricably braided with deep wants and desires. The psychological push and pull of such a contradiction results in a dynamic sexuality that is delicious and frightening all at once. We delight in the unorthodoxy and seeming degeneracy of our passions: we’ve been told they’re incorrect but yet, we want it.

With “A Garden Under The Earth” I explore these conflicting and fascinating emotional dynamics. I hope to understand this distinctly homosexual instinct to challenge the existing paradigm; and how that can counterintuitively be a source of subversive pride; provide a path to the reclamation of our bodies and identities; and set the stage for a rebellious self-rebirth.

Fairie mythologies are the perfect vehicle to explore these themes: in researching folkloric fairie beliefs, I came to find striking parallels between the way these mischievous, often dangerous spirits were perceived and the fears that surround non-normative sexual identities to this day. The fae ceremonies from these old tales also bear surprising resemblances to modern day queer, erotic rituals, which often occur in liminal spaces, hidden away from the venomous eyes of those that may not understand and available only to those that know where to find these underworlds.

I perceive queerness as a challenge to convention, a crossing of seemingly rigid borders. Myth, fantasy, and folklore inspire this worldview: in those stories, characters obscure distinctions between male and female, human and spirit, floral and faunal. They traverse between realms, bodies and identities, showing how fixed boundaries can be made permeable. In my work, queerness is depicted as a difficult but transformative, magical ritual. Through it, I aim to unravel the emotional complexity that arises from being othered and sublimate it into visceral, sensual fantasy.



‘A Garden Under The Earth” production frames

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A Garden Under The Earth - Ch. I: COURTSHIP (digital sculpture)

A Garden Under The Earth - Ch. II: FAERIE RING (digital sculpture)

A Garden Under The Earth - Ch. III: COVENANT (digital sculpture)

A Garden Under The Earth - Ch. IV: CHANGELING (digital sculpture)

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‘A Garden Under The Earth” installation view for ‘Within, Below’, NYC 2023



In a series of dreamlike, digital vignettes, two wild fairies engage in an increasingly intense erotic ritual.



Through lyrical poetry and oneiric imagery, the film mythologizes the homosexual practice of “cruising”: clandestine sexual encounters in public spaces. It analogizes this queer custom to ancestral Pan-European accounts of fairie ceremonies and equates the faerie ring–a mythical portal to the underworld–to the real world liminal spaces where cruising historically occurred.
These sensual, magical encounters take place in-between worlds. Spaces not yet completely retaken by nature but no longer the domain of man either; alluding both to ancient beliefs that the faerie realm was located somewhere between humanity and the wild; and to the history of queer sexuality: often relegated to the fringes of society.


CutOut Fest 2024 Official Selection

CUÓRUM 2024 Official Selection

Squish Movie Camp Official Selection

Featured in ‘Within, Below’ on view at Chinatown Soup 9.18.23 - 10.01.23

and distant.gallery 10.05.23 - ∞

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original concept, direction - Pedro Lavín

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Jordan Hall & Jack Blackmon as The Fairies

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3D design - Pedro Lavín

3D design and animation - AXONBODY

movement - Wesley Ensminger

original score - Ignacio Ferrarazzo

production and sfx - Taüs Jafar

2D animation - Mayukh Goswami

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2024
PEDRO LAVÍN
BROOKLYN / CIUDAD DE MÉXICO