Tales of a Future Past is a video about a giraffe and a zebra who fight over an undefined baby creature, in hopes of making it one of their own species. Using toy masks and a sparse theatricality, Cecelia Condit creates a contemporary reflection on species extinction and the lonely, silent world that will ensue from it.
Since the early 1980s Cecelia Condit’s narrative videos have explored the not-so-average experiences of the “average woman” in a social climate of sublimated violence, fear, and misogynist aggression. Her dark-humored works conflate fairy tale morals with the grisly sensationalism of tabloid headlines, incorporating live action, appropriated television images, and original music into frequently operatic narratives. Condit is a Professor Emerita of Film and Video at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
"My work centers around the theme of how bizarre events disrupt mundane lives. By contrasting the commonplace with the macabre, humor with the absurd, I address a reality that is both surprisingly believable, yet strange enough to belong only to the realm of fiction."
— Cecelia Condit
Mary L. Nohl Fellowship, Greater Milwaukee Foundation, 2005