The Hunger

The Hunger is an exploration of the phenomenon of excess inspired by historical events fictionalised in the novel The Witness by Argentinian writer Juan José Saer. The Hunger follows the European colonisers‘ trails in the Rio de la Plata region in South America at the beginning of the 16th century. A group of indigenes attacks Spanish colonisers in the north of present-day Argentina. Only one person survives and becomes part of the Colastiné tribal community. After he gets freed by fellow Spaniards later on, he reflects and remembers his perceptions during the time he spent with the tribe.

In The Hunger, cannibalistic rituals overlap with different forms of greed, from colonialism and consumption frenzy in today’s capitalist societies to the hyperproduction of an endless Now on social media. Cyclically recurring, collective rituals are used to establish a (feeble) sense of reality, a kind of „normality“ following their own social rules and conventions. The „transformation of taboo into totem“ finds an echo in new forms of shifting boundaries, while our own privacy is swallowed up by the representational logics of the digital world.

Does reality only exist if you’re observing it?