A Residue, an Oceanic Feeling or Freezing of Thought?

The title, Lethe, derives from Greek mythology; the river Lethe flowed around the Cave of Hypnos and through the underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. This film is examining sea, ice and rivers as channels of memory and feeling, and how water itself is conveyed digitally. The project directly responds to the writings of Virginia Woolf who strove to represent the mind and all of its nuances, transitions, feelings and moments of harmony with the universe, often through water imagery. It is a dialogue between two places, Vancouver and Dublin, following an unidentified dweller of a watery space, who has been transported to an instability of thought and vision.

Landscapes of ice and dust, flowing water, sounds of murmured drowsy forgetting and wind singing through an old house.

This work has been included in the collection Displacements, alongside moving image works by 7 other Irish artists, curated by Richard Ashrowan for the MExIndex 2020 Irish annual screening.

Lethe / 2020 / HD video with sound / 07:17

Filmed in Vancouver, Canada and Dublin, Ireland

Narrator – Amanda Jane Porter