How leopards caught leopards

 

 

Marcello Mercado
How leopards caught leopards,
1-channel video installation,
20 min. 41″ (loop)
stereo 4:3 black/white/color
2014

 

 

This is a post-documentary video work created in 2014, situated somewhere between experimental documentary and expanded documentary practices.

The footage was discovered by chance: anonymous webcam streams from users who communicated silently through gestures and smoke. These broadcasts took place during the original airing of the final episodes of Breaking Bad, a time when a virtual community of fans gathered online, sharing presence without words.

All videos were captured from now-defunct, silent web-cams—digital relics of a momentary collective ritual. The soundtrack was later reconstructed, echoing the degraded quality of the original transmissions, emphasizing the broken fidelity and ghostly textures of early streaming media. To preserve the anonymity of the users, the images underwent intense digital processing and abstraction.

What emerged was a fragmented network of solitary figures, lit by the glow of their screens, exhaling smoke—signals of a shared affective state, sometimes euphoric, sometimes numb. The nature of the substances remains unspoken, but perceptible in the rhythm of gestures, in the slowness of movements, in the gaze that wanders.

This piece explores how digital networks enabled new forms of contact, altered states of togetherness, and ephemeral intimacy—through smoke signals, livestreams, and spectral encounters in shared virtual space.

 

VIMEO PASSWORD:  lmrd3