2-minute excerpt . 4K video, animation and sound. Total running time (TRT) 9:20min.

During the height of the COVID lockdown, I found a box in my mother’s house. It was a strange collection of beautiful objects – luminescent feathers, a perfectly preserved butterfly and a glistening rainbow beetle… They were also dead. I also witnessed and filmed my mother rescuing a small bird that had become trapped in the shed.

The box got me thinking about human relationships with the so-called natural world. While our interconnectedness is undeniable, is there a way out of the basic instrumentalism of our human viewpoint? How do we manage our grief for lost environments? I captured a few small, quiet moments of attempted reciprocation with the non-human, and wondered whether they matter in the context of overwhelming systemic destruction and the ever-increasing dominance of the virtual world.

With the assistance of LMCC Governor's Island Residency