Speaking: Ruth Maclennan, artist and researcher
How are geopolitics and environmental change experienced on the ground? How can you find out, let alone represent those experiences? Ruth Maclennan will discuss her films and other artworks made in and about the Russian Arctic and how they emerge from her research and a kind of fieldwork involving open questions, formal experimentation, and improvisation. She will show excerpts from her films Cloudberries, Call of North, and Hero City, and also discuss new possibilities and plans for collaborative practice and fieldwork in light of the pandemic and the ecological emergency.
Maclennan filmed Cloudberries (2019) while travelling with an anthropologist, each conducting their own research and exchanging ideas about fieldwork and practice. Cloudberries was filmed on the Kola Peninsula in a small fishing village along the Northern Sea Route during the hottest summer on record. The village has taken on geopolitical significance because it is situated at the nearest point on land from the Shtokman gas field. But lives go on below the radar. The narrator – the filmmaker – is “just visiting” with her camera. She sits chatting in kitchens, meeting villagers and visitors, listening to the sounds of wildlife and the sea, a music festival, and an abandoned schoolhouse full of life.
Cloudberries, Call of North, and Hero City will be available free to view online before the event via a temporary password-protected link to registered participants.