About

Creatures of the Lines is a new film in production by the artist Sonia Levy, working in collaboration with more-than-human anthropologist Heather Swanson. It explores how desire for economic growth and linear progress has produced a landscape of lines— a series of straightened features reaching out to distant places— starting from a focus on England’s canals. Attempting to work from within muddy, submerged sites rather than from grand narratives, the project asks what risks are associated with the conversion of once-curvy and braided worlds into straightened and simplified watery landscapes.

The film has been developed through sustained conversations with academics from Loughborough University’s departments of Geography and Environment, and English.

This online event hosted in association with Loughborough University’s Institute of Advanced Studies will combine a screening of the film’s first cut with a conversation led by Levy and Swanson connecting its form to the issues it explores. This conversation will inform the film’s final edit, to be developed across the summer and autumn of 2021.

The work has been commissioned for Radar’s Risk Related project and Aarhus University’s Ecological Globalisation Group. It features a score in development by Georgia Rodgers with Sara Rodrigues and Roxanna Albayati, as well as specially commissioned field recordings and composition by Jez riley French.

Booking

Booking is free but essential and can be done here.

Accessibility

This event will take place on Zoom, with A.I. generated live captioning available. If you have any specific access needs please let us know via the booking form.

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