Witch Island

Synopsis

⁣Witch Island is a place where howls transform into song and stones give birth to the dead.


After a miscarriage, I dreamed the earth gave birth to a stone. This film is the extension of that dream. I shot all of the images for this film in small cove at Rhode Island’s Narraganset Bay. The cove flooded at high tide and emptied at low tide. So, I worked in concert with the tides. Arriving at low tide I would shoot until I was waist deep in waves and then retreat up the cliffs as the tide came in. Thus, this film acknowledges the uncontrollable wildness of the natural world, of our lives, and of the process of art making. I shot the ocean as well as the craggy cliffs that composed the cove. At first, the stone seemed immobile and the ocean turbulent. The more I photographed, the more I saw life in each. The stone held layers of geological time and the ocean—cyclical waves and tides. Stone and sea met in the cove and shaped each other. Each made the other more alive. My photographs became—not a way of arresting movement—but a way of showing the life in the landscape. I made the film itself using an animation process called ‘pixilation’ in which thousands of photographs—twenty-four per second—are played in quick succession to create on-screen movement. Animation is the process of enlivening or of finding life. It confirmed my belief in the vitality of the world and later, in my own body.