Inspired by the exhibition Life on Land, these works present terrain as active and unstable sites that both hold and resist the stories imposed upon them. Attending to the material and temporal dimensions of place, the films are animated by light, movement, and absence. Through these shifting geographies, landscapes emerge that remember, reveal, and resist.

Organized for the Artspace by Caitlin Horsmon, Associate Professor of Film & Media Arts at UMKC, the program features Terrestrial Sea by Cathy Lee Crane and Luc Houle, The Soldier’s Lagoon by Pablo Álvarez-Mesa, and Redshift by Emily Richardson.

Terrestrial Sea, Cathy Lee Crane, US/Mexico, HD video, 15 minutes, 2022
Water and paths of migration converge to shape the borderlands along the U.S/Mexico boundary when staging actors in a politicized landscape leads to the rupture of fiction for fact.

La Laguna del Soldado (The Soldier’s Lagoon), Pablo Álvarez Mesa, Columbia/Canada, 16mm on video, 76 minutes, 2004
200 years after Simón Bolívar’s liberation campaign across Colombia, La Laguna del Soldado retraces The Liberator’s journey across the high-altitude marshlands while searching for glimpses of his ghost still present in this historically contested territory.

Redshift, Emily Richardson, United Kingdom, 16mm on video, 4 minutes, 2001
In astronomical terminology, 'redshift' is a term used in calculating the distance of stars from the earth, hence determining their age. The film has a gentle intensity to it, and is composed of changes of light across the sea, sky and mountains. It shows movement where there is apparent stillness, whether in the formation of weather patterns, movement of stars, the illumination of a building by passing car headlights or boats darting back and forth across the sea’s horizon.