Daughter of Dog is occupied with loss and its debris. The film is composed as an elegy, haunted by plants, animals, magical thinking and forms of aggression. The work revolves around a text that threads personal reflections with references related to beliefs and rituals that originated in Jerusalem, to scripture, memory, biology, complicated love and civil engineering.
The film moves in circles around associative, interweaving images: moths that look like twin snakes, a robot dog being kicked around a room, the cavities and digestive fluids of carnivorous plants, black dogs painted as skeletons, dancers rehearsing a choreography adapted from a pogo dance tutorial. The soundscape is composed of recorded live drum beats, which are electronically destabilised and rearranged. The work is haunted by a restless and capricious energy, where grief takes the form of hyper alertness and is fragmented, destabilising and messy.
*
Supported by Somerset House
Studio Producer: Alex Paveley
Dancer: Lewis Walker
Mosh pit: Max Cookward, Isaac Glenister, Spike King, Samara Langham, Iona Lily McGuire
Drums: Alex Paveley
Many thanks to:
Sebastian Buerkner, Sophie Hunter, Tommie Introna, Louise Jesi, Laurent John, Murad Khan, Harry Leek, MTC Liverpool, Thomas Reynolds, Matt Soper, Nicola Tasker, Eva Verhoeven, Daniel Watson.