projects
MauMau Blood Dreams 2026 explores the origins of narrative in fairytale. A deceptively fluffy subject, European fairytale-fable dominates media, theatre, film, literature, politics, visual art.
In Spain and North Portugal archaeologists recently found Neolithic rock landscapes tattooed in designs. They describe hunts, conflicts, events, warriors, hunters - no women. After studying the symbols, I realised the designs morphed into the local word-of-mouth folklore in the Bronze Age. Unusually bloody, savage, brutal stories, they are surreal, scary, they seem to make no sense. In the 17th century the tales were re-written for sophisticated audiences and transformed into stylish, dream-like, magic fairytales, always with happy endings.
“The folktale is the primer of the picture-language of the soul,” Joseph Campbell.
I wonder why we keep telling ourselves these same stories? And I wanted to see how far I could push it - and deciding to cut-up and make new stories, reversing roles, outcomes. Hoping to explore new narratives through which we can visualise a different world future.
WORKS
FILM
Moon is a Dagger
Bazar Magico
Sharqui Tree
Beast
SheShells
Cold Mountain 2024 contemplates human relationships with the natural environment. The title is attributed to the legendary Tang era (618–907) Dao-poets Shide and Han Shan. Poet Gary Snyder’s 1950’s translations of selected Cold Mountain poems, and characterisation of the hermits, are depicted in Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel, The Dharma Bums.
FILM
Hunters Heart
Surfers Soul
Farmers World
A*str0P00L 2023 asks, 'Are we ready?´ Can we accept varied life forms, challenges to belief, perception, space travel and colonial behaviour, and adapt to transhumanism, and artificial consciousness designed within our bodies? This series of speculative, humorous and poetic films is composed with clips from early sci-fi movies.
WORKS
Shinzo Co-Star, gif-book
Series of 4 prints on linen
FILM
My Bot Dancing 2the End
There is Void
Cornflakes Hullabaloo
Hinchinarfer
Planet of Dreams 2022 proposes radical alternative, dream-based practices of stewardship for the future of humanity and earth and solar system commons. And, as a way to develop self knowledge and critical thinking in an age of increasing planetary crisis and cosmic consciousness.
FILM
Goose Moon Owl
Magic Dream
Nomad Dreams, the Sorceress, the Flying Saucer and the Moon
DreamTown USA
Dream Come True
SpaceLife Dreams
WORKS:
Oracle Books
I Have Known Rivers watercolors
Shaman Trees photographs
Love Fugitif 2021. Nine haiku films, made in response to the dystopic year of the covid virus, examine the only constant in our life, love.
WatchFiends: 100 seconds to midnight 2020, reflects on challenges humanity faces in six short films. From plague, weather instability, AI surveillance, ethics and choice, apocalypse, space mining and migration. The title ‘WatchFiends’ is a line from Blake: ‘What the Watchfiends cannot find.’ With Jeff Crouch.
Club Paradise 2019 examines vacation culture, consciousness and capitalism. The vacation migration is compared to early nomadic tribes led by their shaman on the tracks of game. But now, the game pursued is a state of mind advanced by corporate interests to produce a workers' consciousness tolerant of capitalist slavery.
FILM
Welcome
Moon on Fire Meditation
Race the Sun Meditation
Last Exit
Cabo Peligro
Tears in the Night
Club Paradise
WORKS
Postcards with Rafael Gonzalez, Jeff Crouch
Cruise Collection, t-shirts
Tourist Fun, photography
Trouble in Club Paradise, polaroids
Blue Souvenir, cyanotype prints
Drone Drama: Music for the Dead 2016 asks, ‘What is it to be human in the age of the drone?’ in a collaboration between filmmaker Cecelia Chapman and composer Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt. Chapman's interpretation of Marquardt’s titles of eleven chapters question the militarization and commodification of knowledge, and the friction between technology corporations and local communities on the San Francisco Peninsula.