Direction of the Road |
by Janelle VanderKelen
USA, 2023, 8 min
Janelle VanderKelen is an artist, curator,
and educator currently based in Knoxville, TN. Her films and intermedia
installations imagine alternative acts of relation between imperfect bodies
(human, vegetal, geological, or otherwise) and make visible the agency of
plants through experimental time-based media processes.
As a tree muses on their
role in the Order of Things, this being (which humans normally think of as
immobile) reveals the speed, agility, and finesse integral to their experience
of the world. Adapted from a short story written by Ursula LeGuin, this decidedly
inhuman filmic narrative uses the overlapping cyan and scarlet of anaglyph
stereoscopic 3D imaging to speculate how a tree (which responds more acutely to
light waves in the red and blue portions of the spectrum) might perceive the
world visually. Though 3D stereoscopy is used in this film, it is intended to
be viewed without 3D glasses.