The Ferrovores and after-image at the 2021 Carmarthen Bay Film Festival

“I see them and look them away … see stinger-ray hide in bush … climb for a better view … afraid of spider-snake-lizard … we watched them watched us … “

Two of my videos, The Ferrovores, and after-image, have been selected for the Carmarthen Bay Film Festival in Wales, which runs in May 2021 and is one of the leading film festivals in UK.

after-image was shot around Port Adelaide, the Adelaide CBD, and Belair, and considers the lives around us that we may or may not see…

But an after-image is also the residual image you see if you look away at a blank wall or something similar having stared at a brightly lit scene. The after-image is a negative of the original in terms of light-dark and colour. It is mostly due to the photoreceptors in the retina becoming desensitised by the original scene. It fades after a few seconds as the receptors reset. The text was originally published in e•ratio 29 (2020).

The Ferrovores, which is about a future life-form dependent on iron for survival, was shot mostly in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia.

Iron is the most common metal on earth. Indeed, it forms much of the molten core of the planet which in turn generates the earth’s magnetic poles. The red soils of the world are due to iron. At a biochemical level, iron is essential for human life, amongst other things, making our blood red. In the societal domain, iron is essential for manufacturing, electricity generation, and much more. Certain bacteria can derive energy for life directly from dissolved iron compounds (“rust”) rather than from oxygen as we do. Perhaps, at some time in the future, we, our descendants, the Ferrovores, may need to do the same.

Originally published in the Atticus Review (July, 2020). It is also an official selection for the 9th International Video Poetry Festival (Athens, May 2021).

“this time, this place… beyond open circulation closed reciprocity… closed hydration spheres wrought cast smithed… this is what we are what we eat … “