From October 19 2022 to January 8, 2023

Easy Prey 

2013

HD Video, color, sound

00:33:02

In Miguel Calderón’s film, Easy Prey, he tells the story of Sergio, a hawk trainer, within a few scenarios that are intertwined to show his life in a contemplative manner. “Just as I did as a kid, adult falconers use falconry as an escape from a world that makes them uncomfortable. I spent years following various falconers who wore military style hunting gear and looked like soldiers in order to make a documentary. It was hard to break into their private sphere. But one day, Sergio—whom I had met ten years earlier—contacted me. I went to see him, and he divulged an amazing life story that included his sexual experiences with his wife and his falconer friends as well as a horrible motorcycle accident. I felt like I’d gotten exactly what I was looking for: a scenario for exploring human nature, with a hawk and its animal instincts as a backdrop. Sergio told a story about how his best friend as a kid stole the girl he was in love with, and he felt humiliated; the event marked him for life and created a psychological pattern. Following this event, Sergio wanted the world to feel the pain he had felt.” (Ana Clara Silva, Introduction, and Miguel Calderón with Pablo León de la Barra in Deferred Archive / 2013 CIFO Grants and Commissions Program Exhibition, 2013, pp. 11, 52–53).

Miguel Calderón (Mexico City, 1971) received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1994. He has been the recipient of the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Grant & Commissions program (2013), The MacArthur Fellowship for Film and New Media (2000), and the Bancomer/Rockefeller Fellowship (1995). He creates works from a mashup of vernacular references, employing a variety of media, including video, photography, sculpture, and painting. His pieces often combine a dark sense of humor that is reconfigured into works that explore deep social and personal territories taking advantage of what is at hand to create low budget films and videos. His work often is unified by an ever-present sense of theatricality, questioning the fine line between reality and fiction. Frequently cast from the perspective of an outsider, he highlights the macabre complexity of our position as humans in the universe deftly weaving together mockery, social critique and straightforward emotions.