Don Federico

Don Federico is an experimental video that, in a simple but troubling way, reveals how the naturalization of violence can be transmitted by cultural expressions. This video experiments with the juxtaposition of found footage and uses a song called Don Federico to create an unsettling dialogue between a seemingly innocent clapping game and real cases of feminicide. This footage is mixed with news stories showing the places in which female bodies have been found and with an audio footage borrowed from a real case of attempted intimate feminicide in Chile. Through the juxtaposition of diverse images, Don Federico invites the viewer to reflect on the naturalization of gender-based violence while making visible how everyday actions, embedded in education and the family environment, may contribute to the naturalization of gender-based violence. In a truly simple and efficient way, this video piece illustrates one of the many ways in which cultural expressions can support a system that naturalizes violence. It is a structure where killing a woman, chopping her into little pieces and cooking her in a frying pan is seen as a joke.

(Extract from Isidori, Agustina (2018) A Research-Creation Approach to Gender-Based Violence. Masters thesis, Concordia University.)