Making a film is for me a way of bringing material into life. A practice of creating movement out of the static. It is a sort of poetic movement towards the unknown into the subconscious. It is perhaps only by moving towards or with or through that which is uncertain that I can arrive at a core in my work. I am reminded of a dream I once had. I was travelling in an elevator down to the deepest level of my subconscious. When I got there the doors opened up to a field full of white lilies. From the center of each lilly, where the stamen and carpel usually grow, darkness glowed, so black it turned almost blue. The lilies all had children’s voices and they were all laughing, so that it became a choir of children’s laughter. There was no sky, only the sound, the field of lilies and the darkness that glowed. If I apply this to film as material, it would be the part of the film that remains unexposed which tells me what I need to know. The light exposes but the shadows contain unexplored possibilities, and I must move towards the absence and uncertainty with curiosity.
I approach film, as Maya Daren puts it, as a poetic language that extends vertically. Like a line which crosses levels of consciousness, evoking different emotions on different planes. In poetry, as in film, each detail is at the same time a detail and a metonymy, a symbol and a sign and its own entity with its own history. I mainly use traditional techniques, such as hand-drawn and direct animation, because I feel that touching physically the frames leaves some ghosts that remain in the film, and makes me understand better what I am doing. Not necessarily a conscious understanding, but I am drawn to it. I like my films to have a sort of texture; to become a living collage. When mixing different materials, it is as if the border between photography, painting and film blurs.
In my practice I use painting, photography, animation and archival footage, with an experimental, participatory process. I’m interested in how collaboration can disrupt hierarchies between artist and subject and subvert stereotypical narrative structures. Conventionally the film is a viewing experience in its final form and the process is a means to this end. But this way of working fundamentally goes against the reason I make films. I cannot say I know exactly what this reason is, but it is in some way influenced by wanting to see a political change and working towards a society free of oppression and exploitation. Oppression and exploitation in one way or other influences everything, internally and externally. So I must imagine new ways of creating. In this way process is not a means to an end, but an investigation and exploration and possible pathways of change. It is not about finding ‘the right way’ of making film, but rather exploring endless paths that film emerges out of. I often work with children and young people, and am interested in finding ways of arriving at an aesthetic consistency where individual contributions can’t be untangled, but each element of the film has at every point several creators.