DRIFT - snippets

Oh yay, what I'd hoped to be able to post today turns out to be do-able (doable?). . . 


I want to share three very short excerpts from the film sequence that accompanies the paper flotilla. . . The film 'proper' is now finished (it's not very long - 11 minutes or thereabouts, and silent - but it'll be looped to become a kind of visual mantra that has no beginning and no end). I haven't quite settled on the configuration for the installation part of this piece yet, but it seems to want to be a circle; ie. a mandala. 

I see this as a meditation piece, an invitation to step outside the noise and bustle of every day and into an ambiguous, dreamlike space. By stepping outside and away, we are sometimes able to re-enter our ordinary experiences more fully, returning to them refreshed or replenished? 


In my imagination, the boats sit away from the wall, packed closely, hull-side up in the lower hemisphere and gradually inverting and separating out as they rise. This is what happens under the ice - - - in order to drift, the boats have to flip themselves over, capturing an invisible cushion of air as they do. It's the air that then carries them through the water, transporting them upwards till they come to rest on the under-belly of the ice. I'm playing around with the idea of creating a circle out of the static or 'frozen' boats, with a 'still centre' that becomes the container for the film's activity - rather like an 'eye' within whose 'iris' the drifting boats come alive, journey and tell their story. Hopefully they will reveal something to us about our story, too, as they act out their small boat drama. 


Heaven knows, we're on this journey together and it's sure as nuts unpredictable. There are passages of great turbulence, heartache, ecstasy and calm - not to mention everything else in between. We must make our solo voyage within our communal one. . . and, too, the other way round. Drift (I think that's the name of this piece) alludes to these themes. If we were to liken this business of living to a piece of complex music, I think we'd all agree that playing it with both technical facility and full feeling requires years and years of practice; some bits we have to go over and over and over again in the hopes we might some day get them right. Some passages are a breeze and we can sail through without batting an eye lid; others, we might have to accede, are better played by someone else with a different skill set or instrument. One thing's for sure - no bar of it is dull. 


Kate's sad, but rich and triumphant funeral yesterday illuminated again how life is urgent, precious - and now. 

Underwater film footage captured in New Harbor, Antarctica, by Henry Kaiser and Shawn Harper; boats released under the sea ice by Sam Bowser; concept and direction by moi (as part of an ongoing collaboration; 2005 - the present)