Christine Kettaneh

This film was my artist response to a workshop organized and delivered by Cassata Drone in the context of an immersive residency in La Sughereta, the natural reserve in Niscemi, Sicily in October 2018. During the workshop we discussed the relevance of camouflage in war, language and art but also made walkscapes to explore the colossal U.S. antennas of the MUOS (Mobile User Objective System) and its controversial stance on the lands of Niscemi.

Tracing paths between bushes and clouds; treading on peeled skins of cork oak and eucalyptus forests; roaming roofs and terraces; escaping the surveillance of wild dogs and snails; we created walkscapes that spiraled us ever closer to the monumental world feelers. The more we asked about those erect sculptures, the more stories we heard about them: the activists that climbed them and tickled them with their hammers, the boots that melted at their base, the confused birds, the refugee bees.

 At each pause, our eyes and lenses contemplated intently those next-generation antennas. As the earth rotated around the sun and we around the antennas, we looked for the smallest changes in aesthetics at every angle and distance. We wanted to believe, or maybe we pretended, that they were looking boldly back at us. We secretly wished maybe that they could seek us, that they could probe into our deepest particles of existence, maybe into the void that held those particles, so that they could save us from our hiding place. So that they could deliver us from the cloud, bush and snail.

 But they most likely were looking past us, much like past the sensitive bees and the migratory birds, past the air and soil that they protruded. They were most likely looking past us, towards worlds not too far away. Where man fought against man, machine against man, man against machine, and machine machine. In the name of man’s security and peace - of course.

REVIEWS:

[…] The human as a monumental world feeler and his own creation with even bigger potential, but completely different purpose. Organic and inorganic, natural and artificial, macro and micro... The contrast between man and nature, the consequences of his actions, deep changes and metamorphoses it causes, and the nature’s response... The work of the author is never a direct criticism, moving disturbing messages to the sub level, where from the collages, abstracted images, sounds (or absence of the same) and their relation we absorb signals, subtle hints and “seeds”, that on the soil of our experience, conscience and intuition grow into premonitions, unsettling feelings and riddles that tickle our mind […] BRFF Short Film Review of “FEELERS” by Head Programmer Andrija Jovanovic. Read the full review here.