She’s feeding
She fed
She will feed
she feeds the birds, imagines a dystopian future where seagulls have usurped the human dominion, reigning over their new subjects, who are divided in set and rigid classes. In this short fiction, Lily Worrall combines the traditions of the NZ Gothic with the speculative potential of science fiction, coining what she terms a ‘glum sci-fi’. A gesture of genre-bending that looks forward to haunt backwards and vice-versa.
The film follows an unnamed feeder, tasked with different districts in Tāmaki where she is to feed the birds. While on the job, a minor discretion sees her abandon the role, fleeing into the deserted city centre to take refuge. Here, she comes across the former havens and grottos of the flâneuse, a spectre of the past who once botanized the asphalt. Glimmers of these former dreamscapes collapse into the nightmarish horizons of a new world where laneways, the ruins of a fashion house and the site of a former arcade-cum-theatre atrophy and congeal.
35mm black and white photographs, single channel digital projection.
