Togetherness stories for healing (with) the Oceans.  

“The ability to heal is sometimes referred to as love, and it has been suggested that love is necessary in order for us, humans, to want to save another - kind/species/being - from extinction. Where does this leave the multitudes of unloved others? In thinking with love towards a healing practice for the Oceans, I want to emphasise their multiplicity, and while individually we may harbour an ability to heal ourselves, and others, togetherness is necessary for healing to be brought into practice.”

Ocean Memory.  Deep Time.

TBA21- Academy- Ocean Archive.

The Sea Sounds and Storytelling.

The Sea – Sounds & Storytelling is an online program proposing to listen to the ocean itself, a living matter that preserves memory, as well as to voices and narratives that have crossed the seas: an approach both artistic and scientific, pursued through art projects by Ursula Biemann, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Binta Diaw, Maria Iorio & Raphaël Cuomo, Dagmawi Yimer, Tomoko Sauvage, Julie Semoroz, and Lena Maria Thüring, and with scientists and theoreticians whose practices revolve around listening to, analyzing, discussing and highlighting voices of the sea.

Astrida Neimanis "We Are All at Sea"

Minding the Gap.

I was drawn to this film because skateboarding is a similar board sport to surfing. I thought I might see some connections in what I want to create.  This film is so much more than I imagined.  A story knitted together from years of footage from one guy from the skate group, ‘Bing Liu’. The closeness Bing has with his friends allows for a much deeper emotional connection. The story transcends the sport and the initial male bravado, the boys carry with them deep pain that unravels as they skate around Rockford, Illinois.  It is really moving to see how domestic violence has permeated each life.  This was the surprising main anchor of all the stories, that resonates and gives so much heart and warmth as to why these boys ‘need’ to skate.  The skating becomes their domain of freedom and relief from life.  This is an element I am interested in, how sport can become so much more, more than a way of life, a religion.  The score was also incredibly beautiful and helped the stories weave together much like the rhythm of the skating.

My Gallery Installation.  Underwater filming/photographic work.

Exhibited in Bowery Gallery Leeds, Projectspace gallery London.

Research filming. Filey.

(Better waves at Cayton Bay, N.Yorkshire).

Filey, North Yorkshire. Research Filming. Light. 

(iphone)

Light at North Yorkshire Coast.

Women who run with waves Blog.  Water Healer....

Connecting to the Wild woman within.

Music Video by Daniel Wolfe.

I am looking to this video for dance and religious symbolism references.  The ferociousness with which Wolfe directs and creates these scenes of intensity, these are the emotions I connect to.  I want to incorporate dance and performance within my documentary with the same urgency and intensity.  To tell the ‘truth’ as much through movement and emotion as with dialogue and anecdotes.  I want to create a feeling for my hometown ‘Goole’ of it’s journey as a run down Northern Post Industrial site, closely entwined with Olive Hunt’s personal story.  Olive lived and died in Goole, her community and the people she supported were her drive. Olive Hunt’s religion, her spiritual guidance was offered in part through her beliefs in Native American cultures.  In mysticism and the unknown. 

My film is the journey of discovery for Olive Hunt, a journey imbued with passion, heartbreak, spirituality, postcolonial history, but most of all life and it’s meaning.

Jenn Nkiru. Rebirth is Necessary. 2017

The mix of archive and performance in this film is incredibly exciting and dynamic filmmaking.  Such a powerful exploration of blackness.

It is not only inspiring creativity but leaves me with further questions on the mix of Native American culture within my film based on Olive Hunt in Goole.  I want to approach the Native American culture with great sensitivity, creating with an ethical eye.  

I am continuing further research into Native American connections to East Yorkshire to tie to Olive Hunt’s interest in the ‘Wild West’.

The Garden.  Derek Jarman

“I offer you a journey without direction, uncertainty and no sweet conclusion” Derek Jarman.

‘This intimate insight into Jarman's inner world was shot on fragile Super8 with the help of friends and collaborators, movingly utilising a cast of iconic, religious figures that include Jesus, Judas and the Madonna.

Shifting from the personal to the political it culminates in a near-mythic exploration of sexual repression at the end of the 20th century. Increasingly ill by this point, Jarman faces his mortality with poetry and dignity.’ BFI

I like the idea of shits between emotions, personal and political, including mythic elements and performance.

“The spiritual meaning behind the cactus is symbolized in its hard protective exterior,  its endurance and strength to survive in new environments and situations. The cactus is adaptable and strong.”

Trent Parke

Minutes to Midnight: “Fly by the seat of my pants, nothing arranged, but just go out and see what was happening in the country… What I do is I try and show it in an emotional way, not physically what the country looks like, but what it feels like emotionally to be living right now in this period of our life.”

The Black Rose: The Black Rose, Parke’s most ambitious project, began in 2007 as a result of Parke beginning to remember his childhood before his mother’s passing. It was a quest to experience memories that he had blocked out for 27 years. The Black Rose explores issues of life, death, and memory through a variety of photographs of objects, plants, animals, people, and everyday scenes of Australia.

“Symbolically, The Black Rose is just death or the overcoming of a long journey. It is the search for absolute perfection, as the black rose does not truly exist. It is also referred to as black magic.” “It’s always about finding answers to life. That’s what I’m looking for.”

These same principles are what drive me to create.  The internal and external worlds and often colliding in my ideas and narratives.  Imaginary and ‘real’.

“It’s still about discovering, and imagination, it’s always about imagination, imagination is the key to everything.” – Trent Parke