Rusted metal shells and abandoned structures seem to persist within the landscape long after people have disappeared. Stripped of their original function, they become open to new meanings.
Fragments of a Place, a Strange Bird, and a New World is an experimental film that constructs a narrative around traces, remnants, and a landscape that remains after something has vanished, yet can no longer be easily named.
Reframing—the act of shifting context—has become a natural method within my artistic practice. What interests me most, however, is the recontextualization of my own documentation: journeys, observations, and prolonged encounters with places that become truly compelling only after others have stopped looking at them.
The film is composed of footage recorded across the Icelandic landscape. Unusual geological formations, ruins, and mechanical remains seem most present precisely when they have been abandoned. Its three chapters explore transformation and an archaeology of landscape—not as a reconstruction of the past, but as a way of perceiving a world in which things lose their former meanings and begin to exist differently.
I find a close affinity with Italo Calvino’s reflections—particularly in The Aquatic Uncle and The Dinosaurs—on worlds where the disappearance of former orders does not erase their traces, but transforms the ways in which they are understood.
In a world without humans, a statue of a seabird begins to appear alive.
The original soundtrack functions alongside the image as the film’s primary narrative layer. It combines electronic synthesis, field recordings, and, in one chapter, sounds generated through a Geiger counter.
