15-05-2023 | Rainforest Archive
This sound and moving image piece incorporates many of the ideas I have been working with this year, and is an expression of the correlation I have attempted to draw between rainforest ecologies and domestic archives.
The sound is made up of layers: a foundation of field recordings taken at Dartmoor National Park’s temperate rainforests, and my experiments with contact microphones. These sit beneath a bed of music samples taken from traditional pearl diving songs from the Persian Gulf and a Welsh folk song featured in the film adaptation of How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn - my mother’s favourite book. On top of this are interview excerpts taken from various conversations I have conducted with my father and mother. There is also reference to British soap operas, of which my father was a fan, and my parents’ wedding song, ‘We’ve only just begun’ by The Carpenters. The piece is bookended with Richard Burton reading Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. My parents have always joked of when my father first came to the UK to study, he asked my mother to recommend reading material to help him improve his English. My mother offered her copy of Under Milk Wood, and remembers how she was most likely trying to impress and intimidate him!
The visual aspect of the piece is made up of footage I filmed at Dartmoor National Park, and at my family home, rifling through boxes of archival material. The video sequence alternates between the contrasting footage, making reference to my ideas on rainforest archives.
I am very proud of this work, particularly the sound which I feel successfully draws out the emotional potency of familial storytelling. The video may be more cryptic to its audience, as I realise my rather nuanced and non-established views on rainforest ecologies mapping onto archival practice will likely not be relatable. However, I do feel on another level the image of me looking through our family photos, and the scenes of quintessential England will strike an appropriate chord.
