Ctrl + Shft + 5: Definition of Red is a video installation/visual essay that offers a semiotic and idiosyncratic definition of the color red. Considering the ambiguity of language and the complexity of its structures, it takes a single word and alludes to its infinite definitions, expressions, metaphors, and associations. This work explores how “red” has been historically, politically, and commercially instrumentalized to sell objects or ideologies, as well as its subliminal role in constructing perceptions of gender, power, and desire.

This investigation considers the biopolitics of language and how it infiltrates our collective consciousness, becoming an instrument of control, shaped by the lessons we are taught and the media we consume. The rapid movement of images and information in the video reflects the frenetic energy of the digitalized age in which we live, and how the enormous amount of data we consume makes it impossible to define a particular word, idea, or concept, even something as seemingly simple as a color.

This is the first work in a line of research that examines the ways in which constructions of power are embedded in language, images, and information. Manipulation, blurring, and the invisibility of the innocent are themes that appear throughout her work, as well as her affective and feminist approach of interweaving fragments of theory, history, and narrative in a nonlinear way, building constellations that propose alternative forms of understanding.

Text by Cristina Reid