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A continuation of the earlier Lines Between Islands I, this project is an interactive documentary portrait of the islands to the farthest west of Norway. Through mixing various genres and elements, including archival and new material, it delves even deeper into space and time to repopulate the islands with still and moving images, sounds, maps and stories.
Photo by Geir Indrevær
In the personal documentary film, a daughter of Punjab returns to her scarred and climate-ravaged homelands to grieve for the generations of separation from this agriculturalized, colonized, and denuded land- and river-scape in the world's Third Pole. She is guided on her journey by her oldest friend, demented poet Irfan Malik, who is losing his language as she is beginning to learn it. Together, they trace lines of language, faith, kinship, water, and mountains to return to the source, to learn what once was, to reckon with the past, and to imagine what could be.
In Research/Pre-Development
The short film series For the Future of Exuma explores different perspectives on island dwelling, touching upon Exuma's past and present; exploring and imagining how island life can be sustained into the future. It was captured during a three week journey through the Exuma cays where we asked people we crossed paths with the same set of questions: How has life changed on these cays? How do people make a living? What are their hopes and dreams for the future?
These questions are answered in the longest piece, which shares the same title as the series, and is accompanied by four short portraits, each offering glimpses of everyday life in Staniel Cay, Black Point, Little Farmer’s Cay, and Great Exuma. The films were commissioned by A Sustainable Future for Exuma (a collaboration between the Government of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, Bahamas National Trust and Harvard University Graduate School of Design) and were exhibited at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas.
Two were official selections at Viscult Ethnographic Documentary Film Festival 2017 and Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival 2017.
Photo by Tarjei Langeland
A deep mapping of the islands to the farthest west of Norway reflecting upon how a place affected by currents remembers.
Exhibited as an installation in Cric?Crac!2015 and mentioned in "Re-visioning 'North' as an ecosophical context for creative practices", a chapter written by Iain Biggs in Relate North: Culture, Community and Communication.
“Such a polyvocal work requires both particular care in its presentation and time and attention to view and read its multiple components so as to ponder the immersion in the various connectivities and discontinuities its multiple voices evoke. Taken literally, this is a highly specific project in terms of its address to place, but it is also one that for me resonates with quite other and disparate works concerned with the po-soul of communities that ‘go down to the sea in ships’ (Psalm 107:23), from the painter Andrzej Jackowski’s Settlement (1986) to the consistent nautical thread running through the various works of the Scottish artist Will MacLean.”
- Iain Biggs about Lines Between Islands (2016:27)
Photo by Lorenzo Ferrarini
An ethnographic investigation into the depletion of the vast Ogallala Aquifer and the disappearing rivers and creeks of northwestern Kansas, featuring split-screen sound film and other materials collected in the field. Central to the American imagination, this land of promise has metamorphosed into the scarred and thirsty place we find today. This work explores how multi-generational farming families practice farming past the 98th meridian, where it rarely rains enough to support the kind of water-intensive crop growing that many do. By focusing on conservation-minded High Plains farmers, their adaptive practices, and the traces in the landscape, this project attempts to understand if soil and water are understood as more than just resources to be exploited.
Exhibited at Ways of Dwelling: Crisis, Craft, Creativity, the 13th Congress of Société Internationale d´Ethnologie et de Folklore.