 body of water - seaweeds, a cat concierge, and cold April waters. Mawddach. I do not know where to begin to speak of the most enchanting, intense, and peaceful two weeks we have ever experienced working creatively. This was our first residency, and we had high expectations of ourselves: to film all footage for our poetry film “body of water”. body of water explores the body as an ecosystem, both vulnerable and robust. We began some very intuitive and raw initial filming during a weekend in Barmouth last year, and were captivated by the calm beaches and the complex tidal rhythms of the Mawddach Estuary. The idea for this project was born upon Barmouth bridge, looking down into the slowly revealed world of moonjellyfish and sealettuce. So we could not have been more thrilled to have been accepted for the residency! Maybe you are asking yourself, what is a poetry film? For us it is an exploration of what happens when poetry moves beyond the page and into images, sound, voice and performance. For us, poetry film is a chimerical being: part cinema, part ritual to honour our environment, part direct action against patriarchy and extractive capitalism. It is a moment where poems swim out to sea and become an incantation and take you into a realm where everything is possible. The residency offered us such a unique opportunity: to dive deep into this ancient landscape, to get to know every lichen patch on a first-name basis, to become one with the water, to hear a goldfinch song for the first time, to be swallowed, swamped with all the colours of sea-mist. Being so close to the water deeply called to something within us. It took us out of our compulsive productivity and reacquainted us with a rhythm that has become strange to us: tidal. To live in synchronicity with the moon and the sea.
Waking up at dawn to catch the soft pink cloudlight, simply going for a swim midday because the currents are at their calmest, and the forests of bladderwrack are most cooperative for filming. It felt as if the environment was our collaborator, part of our artistic team. The gorse an unpaid actor, the wind the director, and Moritz and I are desperately trying to capture just a fraction of all this incredible, feral beauty. The waves swept more and more stories of selkies, sea spirits, and shape-shifting beings into our dreams. Everything was unfolding, opening up within us, and the story we were trying to tell for so long could finally arrive. We were learning the language of our story, how to speak of and with a body constantly flowing, changing. It certainly helped that Toby, the resident purring concierge, was always there to warm our feet after long days of filming, while Jake and Scarlett kept us wonderfully fed with the most delicious (and pretty) pumpkin and rhubarb. We left feeling so inspired by the care and imagination of their work, and so grateful for the generosity, warmth, and fabulousness with which they held the space around us. By the end of the two weeks, we had finished filming body of water, which would never have been possible without the residency. But more than that, we had been given the rare and beautiful chance to live inside the work: to follow the weather, the tides, the seaweed, the strange little sparks at the edge of the water. We had time to try things, permission to fail, to laugh, to be soaked through, to let the film reveal itself rather than force it into being. We left with wet sandy shoes, full hearts, and a hard drive full of seaweed, seamoss. body of water has not been made in Mawddach, but with it. C.Moss Collective website / instagram Kate MacAlister Moritz V:3rës
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