Working collaboratively in moving image, installation, and text, since 2018, our practice has been driven by questions about the thresholds between the body and its surroundings, knowledge regimes and power, modes of organizing and perceiving the natural world. Our ongoing interest in the social and political histories of Western science is driven by a series of open-ended questions about how the world has been organized historically and, crucially, how it could be otherwise. Moving image allows us to interrogate existing models for perceiving and organizing the world and to create new expressions of creative unfolding via experiments in form, movement, sound, rhythm, light, and storytelling. By exploring the cinematic form in its broadest expression, we blend social and political narratives with immersive and playful sensory experiences in image and sound.

We think about the essay film form as a path to be explored through multiple registers of meaning and feeling. At its best, every point along the path provides a space to dwell in and ask questions about the many components that together make up our perception of the world and our positions within it. On that path there are smells, sounds, the feeling of sunlight touching the back of your neck. Sometimes, a guide accompanies you on the path, sometimes, you explore the path alone, letting your senses guide you on tangents. All of these modes are in play at any given time. None of them are more accurate or authoritative than the others. The essay film in this way represents a radical openness to the production and reception of meaning as multiplicity. During the masterclass we will explore this approach to making and encountering a film as a walking trail. ‘