Diana ThaterAnother Kind of Time

rhino in the foreground to the left and person squating while taking a picture in the background to the right
Diana Thater with Sudan the Rhino, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kenya, 2016. Diana Thater Studio. Photo by T. Kelly Mason.

Diana Thater films in the natural world, capturing how animals such as wolves, elephants, bees, and dolphins inhabit another kind of time and space. Playing with the temporal and spatial qualities inherent to film and video installation, Thater considers the ways media—like traditional Hollywood films and nature documentaries—shape our understanding of the world around us. She says, “It’s really about questioning how we know animals, how is information about animals delivered to us. . . . I want us to find different ways to think through living, and different ways to construct power. How do we think about the natural world in a way that doesn’t destroy it?”1 A pioneer of video installation art, Thater models her work on animal environments, exploring video’s capacity for imagining non-narrative time and expanded perception to induce a sympathetic response.

  1. Diana Thater, in “Diana Thater: ‘Delphine,’” Art21 Extended Play, episode 240 (October 2016), video, 4:25 minutes, available at youtube.com/watch?v=cR8hHg06ooY. ↩︎