Here you can view films I’ve made as part of my practice.
To view an excerpt of this film go here.
This project started as a ritual – a way to ground myself and learn from my daughter whilst navigating my own ‘diagnosis’ of neuro-divergence. I wanted to “exfoliate the shame” (as Hannah Gadsby puts it), and build up new neural pathways motivated by play and presence.
In late spring, we danced and marked a path through the field behind my house (with care). Through summer we walked that path as regularly as we could. My daughter led me through her senses, taught me how to feel and know the field. I recited the poem over and over. By august, everything had changed. And we were all still the same – still at the beginning.
The poem is by poet Hannah Emerson from her book ‘The Kissing Kissing’ (Milkweed Editions, 2022). Hannah is a non-speaking autistic poet from New York.
If the point is Joy
To view the film click here.
This film explores the tensions inherent in the moment we inhabit – where both hope and anxiety colour everything, from wild walks to parenting and far beyond: the challenge of holding both these feelings simultaneously as we travel through our inter-twined lives.
The words for this piece were initially written as a way of processing the challenges of navigating the world with my disabled daughter. The footage has been gathered over the years, watching and delighting in her interactions – intuitive, joyful, sensory – with the world around her.
It was only on reading the open call for this exhibition that I began to frame these words and images from another perspective; that I began to see the way in which these composite feelings of hope and anxiety were embodied both in my relationship with her, and in my relationship with the landscapes and the more-than-human of this place we all call home.
In putting this piece together I wanted to capture the sensory richness, the diversity of textures, movements, interactions that make up our wild spaces: which nourish and delight us and which are now so precarious due (in large part) to the limits of our imaginations and our comfort with difference. I believe that freedom for wild places and for people lies in welcoming joy, glorious chaos and diversity with open arms and curiosity.
Sound editing and support provided by Nathan Gibson
NickyMay.co.uk 