we are (not) our names.

This one started with a discomfort I've carried since I was a kid: the sense that my own name never quite belonged to me. At home I'm Luis Arturo, to friends just Luis, at school I went by my last name, Freddy — three names, three versions, none of them fake, each just serving a different room. I shot this chasing clear skies in Lyon ahead of a coming storm, ended up at a crowded garden instead of the solitary liminal space I wanted, and turned that setback into something more intimate: talking to the camera like the viewer was walking beside me. There's a shot on a basketball court where I multiply on screen — every version of me sharing the same frame, each with its own name and its own role. That's the whole video: we're the names people call us, and also everything that spills outside of them.

Part of the same thread as the rest of the archive — identity, and how much of it is actually chosen versus handed to you. More of this register lives in Stratus, the full archive of video essays.