Wholeness: Homage to Maya Deren (2022)

Animated film, 2:47

“…But trying to lean into…the ebbs and flows and cycles of time and life and the awareness of it, and also a kind of humbleness towards it, a humility towards it, in such crazy, destabilising, painful times…” 

This short experimental animation study was created as part of Wysing Art Centre’s AMPlify residency. Watch it here.

This project began as a mediation on the limits of subjectivity and the need to transgress them in order to recognise the sentience of the natural world and reject the culture/nature and human/animal binaries created to dehumanise indigenous people. My initial thinking for this was influenced by writing on Panpsychism, the concept of ‘Oceanic Feeling’ as interpreted by Jackie Wang, and Islamic liberation theology. 

Inspired aesthetically by the surreal dreamscapes of Maya Deren, particularly her films: ‘At Land’ (1944) and ‘Meshes of the Afternoon’ (1943), this study stands as an homage to her exploration of dreams and subjectivity. The resulting animation constitutes a wander through a surreal landscape, where the figure merges into and out of the surroundings. Natural features such as rocky cliffs come to resemble an open mouth and bugs crawl across skin to show continuity between the land and the body, both alive and capable of holding life.

Credits:

By Sarah Al-Sarraj

Featuring Sarah Khan

Sound by Rosemary Moss

Voicenote by Maria Düster

Special thanks to Uma Breakdown for their guidance and mentorship, Lucy Shipp and Chloe Page for their consistent understanding and encouragement, and all the 21-22 AMPlify residents for their support.