OCEANIC ALCHEMY: Collaborations and Surrenderings in Film Eco-Processing

Valine, Ana. OCEANIC ALCHEMY: Collaborations and Surrenderings in Film Eco-Processing. Master of Fine Arts (Experimental Film), April, 2021, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, BC. My filmmaking practice has been centered around ocean plant film development and the ‘oceanic feeling’. My contemplations have taken the form of experiments in eco-processing as both the method and subject of my work. This opens for me the following questions: how does the act of inviting and collaborating in the shoreline, and then surrendering to the outcomes, manifest physically, spiritually, and psychologically in the filmmaking process? How do these invited variables transform the observer and the celluloid? These questions are important for me as an artist who is re-situating myself in my practice. I’m relearning how to be a filmmaker; as a restorative art form and as a way to understand, and contribute to, the world in which I create. I'm opening the camera and myself to possibilities of re-imprinting, unlearning and responding in new ways. In this slowing down to see and listen more deeply, is there potential for creative re-integration through immersion in place and material practice? How can we consider acts of reciprocity in our creative work with natural elements? When I consider the shoreline and its inhabitants as teachers and partners in my making, what does that do to the hierarchy of filmmaking outside of the film industry? Through material engagement, I'm exploring forms of renewal and restoration in collaboration with the sea, discovering ways of making films with the ocean using seaweed and seawater. The shoreline begins to function as a space of potentiality and transformation. Perhaps it is in response to big picture, urgent topics that I’m opening a tiny lens on more intimate collaborators. Maybe there are connections to the macro through the micro. I'm wondering how we will be changed if we acknowledge this Earth as the knower and ourselves as discoverable. How will surrendering to the timeless patience of the sea change my ways of making?