96 human waste bags left on the Moon
2021
This is the short film study made for the EYE Research Lab in Amsterdam under the supervision of a filmmaker and teacher Noud Heerkens.
The film 96 human waste bags left on the Moon (2021, 7’ 30’’) is divided into three parts, each is responding to the proximity of a body.
The story was initially inspired by a news article announcing there are currently 96 human waste bags left on the Moon. This information made me curious about human impact during the exploration missions, and the ambiguity of terms such as exploration and its antonym ignorance.
The research of the film was influenced by the book Down to Earth by Bruno Latour who reminds us that the Earth is a critical zone surrounding and including us not the Globe as seen from above in the space. As human beings are curious, we have a power to get to see so far away, expand the horizons as well as inevitably change them and forget our closest localities.
The film triptych developed into a study of the close and distant, and through listening to abjected bodily sounds, it is an invitation to land nearby our bodies. The first part is using an recorded discus
sion between NASA astronauts while observing a surface of the Moon, the second part of the triptych translates belly sounds into a visual language. The third part is a collaboration with dancer Femke Adema who is using the centre of her body - the belly - to move within the space while waiting to depart.
‘The opposite of exploration is said to be ignorance. To be ignorant means not curious enough, not passionate to learn, not hungry to discover what lies behind the horizon in the unfamiliar lands of nobody. How could the world exist without not knowing?
Places so far away suddenly become transparent, closer than our own skin. To explore means to travel in or through, to alter, to search, to make familiar, to start a conversation, to usurp, to get to know, to discover, to appreciate, to appropriate, to colonise, to get into the movement things that will never stay the same. How can the world exist with the irreversible?
Manoeuvring through time and space to move out of our bodies, but the intestinal motility calls into motion. The landing.’
The film 96 human waste bags left on the Moon (2021, 7’ 30’’) is divided into three parts, each is responding to the proximity of a body.
The story was initially inspired by a news article announcing there are currently 96 human waste bags left on the Moon. This information made me curious about human impact during the exploration missions, and the ambiguity of terms such as exploration and its antonym ignorance.
The research of the film was influenced by the book Down to Earth by Bruno Latour who reminds us that the Earth is a critical zone surrounding and including us not the Globe as seen from above in the space. As human beings are curious, we have a power to get to see so far away, expand the horizons as well as inevitably change them and forget our closest localities.
The film triptych developed into a study of the close and distant, and through listening to abjected bodily sounds, it is an invitation to land nearby our bodies. The first part is using an recorded discus
sion between NASA astronauts while observing a surface of the Moon, the second part of the triptych translates belly sounds into a visual language. The third part is a collaboration with dancer Femke Adema who is using the centre of her body - the belly - to move within the space while waiting to depart.
‘The opposite of exploration is said to be ignorance. To be ignorant means not curious enough, not passionate to learn, not hungry to discover what lies behind the horizon in the unfamiliar lands of nobody. How could the world exist without not knowing?
Places so far away suddenly become transparent, closer than our own skin. To explore means to travel in or through, to alter, to search, to make familiar, to start a conversation, to usurp, to get to know, to discover, to appreciate, to appropriate, to colonise, to get into the movement things that will never stay the same. How can the world exist with the irreversible?
Manoeuvring through time and space to move out of our bodies, but the intestinal motility calls into motion. The landing.’
Still images from the 3 chapters of the film
study of belly sounds captured on the reversal film, developed with urine-based developer