‘Entangled Atlas’ is a film and exhibition, which presents an allegorical world where spaces of everyday human life are filled with real-time projections of non-human landscapes.
In a London home where time has left its mark, a ghost gum tree in central Australia has grown, not only as a decorative element, but as a member of the family.
On a sleeper train in Mumbai, passengers travel alongside the Thai rice paddies supplying the railway, through a protected Amazonian forest grove, and over a bleached coral reef undergoing regeneration.
And in a near future climate conference set within a former cooling tower, the world watches as delegates vote on Antarctic futures under the gaze of a frozen giant.
'Entangled Atlas' is a call for us to form deeper and long-lasting relationships with non-human kin. The world is underpinned by an attitude of simultaneously watching over and protecting our only Earth with great attention and care, whilst also treading lightly and attempting to 'leave no trace'.
'Entangled Atlas' was first shown at El Espacio Fundación Telefónica as part of their 'Windows to the Future' exhibition.
TEAM
Creative Direction
Bethany Edgoose + Nathan Su + Sarah Su
3D Environments
Nathan Su
Edit
Bethany Edgoose
Soundtrack + Sound Design
Sarah Su
Entangled Atlas
For Espacio Fundación Telefónica
IS-09 | 2024 | Short Film + Exhibition
Dear Mum,
I thought about you today as we got ready for the party. It's entanglement day! Never heard of it? Not surprising; we invented the holiday. But I've got a feeling it's going to catch on. We've entangled our living room with your favorite tree; a ghost gum, this one still just a sapling, growing near the spot in the desert where you showed me how to walk without crushing all the plants in my path. I remember you moved across the landscape like you were part of it. You said; some people think they own the Earth. We forget that we come from it.
I couldn't be further away from that place, now. I'm raising my baby on the other side of the world, in a city built from a millennia of human lives. They will grow up together though, my child and this tree. Two new beings that I will watch over and do my utmost to keep safe. Our attention is a currency. I don't think you would have put it like that but you did used to say: we make things important by looking at them.
I've heard that entanglements with the Amazon are now worth more than logging rights. That has to be good news for our planet.
In the few years since Entangled Atlas came online, our sensors have sent above every continent and every ocean. They are eyes with no feet. Silent, floating sentinels. They make for an unfamiliar sight, perhaps, but I think there's a beauty there; agents of us, humans, bearing witness to the world that we depend on, that we owe a debt to, that we are part of.
You would love this tree, Mum. I'm watching the leaves stir in the Australian breeze and there's a little bird hopping across the red soil. Its song is chiming along with voices of people passing on the street outside. My body is thousands of miles away but the cluster of tiny cares and thoughts and actions that make up the thing that is me is also there, in the desert, under the ghost gum, with you.
So happy entanglement day Mum. May you rest joyfully and feed the Earth and grow gradually upwards into the canopy that waves at me in my living room. I'm waving back.
