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 opposite of exploration is 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 the 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, intestinal motility calls into motion. The landing.’


The film is divided into three parts, each 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, followed by the news about Perseverance Rover landing on Mars in February 2021. This information made me curious about the ambiguity of exploration and ignorance and the triptych developed into a study of the close and distant. Through listening to abjected bodily matter, the film invites us to land nearby our bodies with our more-than-humans.

The second part of the triptych translates belly sounds into a visual language and captures them on a reversal film developed with a DIY urine developer. The third part is a collaboration with dancer Femke Adema.







Still images (and a video excerpt) from the 3 chapters of the film.