A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
Photomontage
Performative Drawing
Act of Listening
About
@hortus_silvam
2019
moving image; sound; writing
Storm statically observes the wealth of sensations a storm brings to this dainty, porcelain cup and saucer, selected with a touch of irony for its sweet strawberry decoration, placed on a garden table, a receptacle of weather over the course of a summer’s day.
Single channel HD colour video, camera sound, text
Cinematic screening: 8 min 20 sec
what cup and saucer,
trivial, fragile vessel?
what dark history,
imperfect, decorative society?
a storm without forecast brings
rich petrichor of rain,
sparkling and dancing
bittersweet
Like a musical composition Storm unfolds a tension and release of sun and rain, shadow and reflection, lightening and thunder. A different domesticity belies this apparently fragile cup and saucer as it fills and flows; inherent is the human and environmental cost of tea and coffee growing landscapes. As the clouds pass sounds vie for attention climaxing in a lightning flash with distorting thunder. As the storm passes, elements of a summer day can be heard returning as people reemerge from home and school.
Location: Forest Garden, Suffolk, UK
The Forest Garden Project is an ongoing act of quiet activism in protest and resistance against the demands of extraction and extinction associated with perpetual growth and expansion.
2025 screened as part of Dialogues by Sophie Standford (UK)
DIVFUSE Film Archive No.1 with a theme on domesticity.
listening, haptic sensation, time, microcosm
© Sophie Standford