How to Identify a Witch, video animation, 3:23, 2014

How to Identify a Witch references historically documented methods used to identify and prosecute a witch. The methods presented in the video, although seemingly bizarre, are sourced from witch hunting manuals, such as the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), which were commonly used reference texts throughout the European justice system during the witch craze.

Simple animations created from illustrations and woodcuts derived from these texts serve to emphasize the absurdity and popular prevalence of the witch craze event, but also gesture towards the problematic belief systems that fostered the emergence of this crazed phenomenon that targeted primarily women and the socially vulnerable as ‘others’.

The continued relevance of this historical topic is manifold. Persecution in the form of repression, exclusion, torture, and execution, premised solely in intolerance of difference, be that physical, behavioral, or spiritual, is still prevalent. As Joseph Klaits poignantly states in Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts, “Plainly, we are not dealing with obsolete issues when we consider such problems as the roots of intolerance, manifestations of prejudice against women and minorities, the use of torture by authoritarian rulers, and attempts by religious and political ideologues to impose their values on society”. The witch is a scapegoat blamed for random misfortunes, but more so persecuted for social position, difference, and otherness – emphasizing the continued importance as an issue of contemplation today.

screenings

2016 How to Identify a Witch, London Ontario Media Arts Association, London, Canada

2016 Cómo reconocer a una bruja (How to Identify a Witch) (Spanish translation), Lima Film Festival, Video Babel Festival Tour Selection, Lima, Peru

2015 Cómo reconocer a una bruja (How to Identify a Witch) (Spanish translation), Video Babel Festival, Cusco, Peru

2015 How to Identify a Witch,[.Box] Videoart Project Space Milano, organized by 28th Festival Les Instants Vidéo, Milan, Italy

2015 How to Identify a Witch, 28th Festival Les Instants Vidéo, [.Box] Program, Marseille, France

2015 How to Identify a Witch, Archivo Queer Italia: Religious Bondage, Cuntemporary, London, UK

2014 Which Witch?, installaion, SOVA Confluence Gallery, Dawson City , Yukon

pmd 2025