Directed by Erin Hill, Tracey Valcárcel, Michaela Gerussi

Synopsis: YIELD reflects on cycles and the legibility of the so-called natural world. In the form of a video poem, it deals with the visual indeterminacy of twilight, considering how we orient ourselves in cycles of time through a granular attention to light and colour.

Distribution Contact: WFG

More Details

RUNTIME: 16 Minutes
GENRE: Experimental, Poetry
PRODUCTION FORMAT: HD
LANGUAGE: English
LOCATION: Quebec
KEYWORDS: Art, Choreography, Environment, Feminist Issues, Film/ Video Art, Poetry, Ecology, Ecocritical, Experimental, Cycles, Dawn, Dusk

Director's Statement: Gerussi, Hill and Valcárcel met in 2011 at Concordia University in Montreal and have since worked together in various constellations in live performance, dance and video. YIELD was created during a residency in Spain and uses images, sound and text to portray “nature” from within an urban environment. Our work takes a post-naturalist stance that proposes a redefinition of cycles involving entanglements between nature, culture and urban zones.

As a visual-poem, YIELD portrays twilight, a time of day when the sky is still affected by the rays of the sun though the sun is no longer visible in the sky. Twilight bathes us in its indeterminate light, begging the question: is this blue dawn or blue dusk? When familiar identifiers are absent, how do we make sense of where we are? The film’s hues of blue situate the viewer within the wisdom of gradients and spectrums. Twilight plunges the witness beyond binaries of day and night, light and dark, offering a wisdom gleaned from the quotidian and situated cycles we live in.

The film’s soundscape was created by sound designer and composer Charlie Khalil Prince (https://charliekhalilprince.bandcamp.com/) with additional music by Erin Hill. The poetry in the film was written collaboratively on-site by the artists, including quotes from Clarice Lispector, Anne Boyer and Maxine Segalowitz.