Lamb Daughter, 2017, HD Video, DV, Sound
2.30 mins
I see you from across the hills, framed within my sight
within a square. Your body jutters as I tape you with my DV camera.
Pregnant and wet from the rain.
Mother Sheep, I see you looking at her, looking at you.
You seem to pose, and you each know that you look so good wearing that green and brown blanket, in your white thatched coat. I’m not sure what finishing school you went to, but you have learned the skill of looking still and beautiful at the same time, very very well.
Some of you grow bored and move away. I look at her walking, you stare, watching her walk away.
I see you seeing me now.
I feel like you have a secret that i’m now in on. I feel a part of your secret,
And then it’s taken away, but knowing only for a second is worth the investigation.
I switch my view of seeing the fields in the distance as a still flat image, to a real material vastness of space.
It’s like falling every 15 seconds, and stumbling at the edge of you.
The switch is uncomfortable and is more of a perceptual challenge. A game I consciously play.
I break you apart every so often, and travel long distances in my head to make the gap feel real.
I’m hugging your collapsing bodies in the rain. I’m falling in my own collapsable state.
I open up your ribs and climb inside for safety.
These walls feel much more uncertain than usual and I merge with embryonic friends, soaking in blood.
I gulp thick clot spasms with you, and fall to the mulches of grass.
Reborn an embryonic friend, a sheeps daughter.
I am a lamb, a daughter with lambs, soaked and laden with wool.
In the circle graze there is an activated game, a play of stones from clopping hooves.
With grey, white, brown and black fingers in sodden clouds.
And circles open in the Spring, yip, yip, yip!
And circles open with dancing kicks, yip, yip, yip!
And circles open in the Spring, yip, yip, yip!
And circles open with dancing kicks, yip, yip, yip!
Filmed in Hawick, Scotland.
Thanks to Alchemy Film Festival, Andrew Kötting and Claudia Barton for the walk.