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The contemporary hunter-gatherer does not hunt to survive Rather, he (neo-survivalism is a predominantly heterosexual male pursuit) forages for something else, something experientially ‘Other’ It’s a phenomenon popularised by the rise of survivalist entertainment – reality TV, docudramas, dedicated YouTube channels, and open-world online survival games – in which contestants must prevail on a desert island, or in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, with only a sharp knife and a bit of twine for tools His efforts are equal parts sportsmanship and showmanship, a combination that manifests in a compulsion to record and make public his triumphs of resourcefulness Actively prepared for emergencies, he is ready to drink his own urine (a feat that proved too great for guest star Barack Obama during his appearance on Running Wild with Bear Grylls), for the collapse of government, economy, and power grids, for threats that are, as Donald Rumsfeld famously put it, both ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’   In her video work Mouth (2017), currently on show at Arcadia Missa, New York-based Croatian artist Maja Čule depicts the contemporary hunter-gatherer – a group of urban survivalists somewhere near New York City, who choose to hunt for their food rather than take the more convenient option of buying it from a shop The video’s protagonists are performers instructed by Čule – some of whom identify as survivalists themselves Blurring in and out of fiction, documentary and narrative film, Mouth alternates between two locations: the grim, neon-lit interior of an animal sanctuary, where we watch a woman named Senka tend to the animals under her care, and a forest, in which we follow a group of men roaming about in the dark, armed with sticks and pocket-sized torches   While Senka is busy at work, the men flex and posture for the camera, leaning excessively on walking staffs made of whittled tree branches, or using them to prod at the foliage One gazes at his feet as he disturbs murky pond water with his boots, another twirls the stem of a leaf between his index and thumb, but they do nothing of note The closest these ‘hunter-gathers’