Ad meliora, or “towards better things” combines hundreds of separate images that create a deep meditation on being, creativity and nature; a mandala of forms that becomes highly symbolic of life, death, yesterday, now, and the next moment. Flowers, plants and textures were photographed in places such as nature conservatories, cultivated gardens, vacant properties and parking lots. The familiar landscape appears molten, luminous and renewed. Ad meliora is suggestive of adaptation, resilience and transformation.
Category: Film
The Other Side of Now
“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than – this” The opening line of the poem touches on words by Fredric Jameson that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
The 16mm film evokes the everyday-ness of life in the abandoned public spaces of the present-day city, colonised by nature and wakening to new possibilities after the long period of pandemic. Erased by the ebb and flow of urban regeneration, these repurposed sites are resonant with the city’s histories, rewilded by visions from past and possible futures.
Poem spoken by Ruth Mitchell.
A Creative Associates project for the Sustainable Earth Institute, University of Plymouth.
Dream Trash Journal
Anonymous (Did You Last, Ancient Nebula)
Of extinction
Petrichor
Petrichor explores the analogy between the degradation of nature and the experience of helplessness as part of human consciousness. Heavily inspired by experimental documentaries and ethnographic films, I focused on combining images of locations and objects that have been discarded and disregarded with the stories and memories of incarcerated women. The sound design, which incorporates not only the voices of the women but also archibal voicemails and recordings, completes the impression of a removed and haunting filmic reality that encapsulates the notions of loss and hope.
Questions for a Dinosaur
Cosmos Obscura
Warning: This video contains flashing images.
Score by Irina Escalante-Chernova
In Cosmos Obscura, the universe is at once known and unknowable. New patterns, rhythms and metaphors are born from old ones, and familiar celestial bodies are refracted into strange and unusual forms. The visuals were created from photographs taken from the Voyager II spacecraft. Photographs of the planets and their moons were abstracted and animated in order to create various patterns, rhythms and images.
The musical work was originally created for 8 channels and subsequently adapted to the stereo version. The music focuses on the work from different backgrounds with the noises of nature and those which have an electronic source.
Weir and clouds 3
The screen contains two moving images: a single shot of clouds in a blue sky placed directly above another single shot of water flowing over a weir. The cloud density in the shot of the sky changes over time – a change which influences the appearance of the water flowing over the weir. The image contains two shots of different forms of water.
The Divine Visions of Hildegard von Bingen
A short film visualizing the ecstatic visions of the divine by renowned German medieval nun, philosopher and mystic Hildegard von Bingen, born in 1098, who invented the language Lingua Ignota, composed music and made discoveries in natural science. These were seemingly bestowed upon her by God through her visions in a period of time when this was forbidden for women. She was a writer, botanist, painter and a truly mysterious female trail-blazer. What did she see?
This abstract film by Paul Vernon was commissioned by Filthy Lucre supported by Arts Council England, with vocals from Josephine Stephenson, arrangement and recording by Joe Bates and music by Hildegard von Bingen.