The Other We, 2015
Video narrative, 30min, looped.
Part of the “Source of Resilience” project.
”Part anthropology, part eulogy, it explores a group of people, living and working off the land. Thoughtful and meditative the film draws you into the gentle rhythms of nature, seasons, harvest, of sowing and reaping. But just as in her light box drawings, Sallis splices the photos of the natural world with the drawings of her inner imagination, again in her film Sallis interweaves her different narratives. For what appears at first to be in part documentary, is framed in terms of her fictional narrative: set against voice-over accounts of bee keeping, permacultural practice and sustainable farming Sallis's origin myth is narrated; that in the beginning was a meteor collision bringing not just water to our planet but introducing as well an infectious agent. This fictional virus is the source of resilience, that necessary component of life which endures and enables, the building block from which all else follows. The bees and spiders in her film serve to remind us of this, that we are all architects of our living spaces, responding to our environments, we all create and innovate, we are all dynamically resilient.” fragment from Catharine O'Shea
