Trails Interwoven was commissioned for the SALT + EARTH Festival of the Landscape, Seascape and Environment, produced by Folkestone Fringe, Creative Folkestone and Kents Downs
National Landscape. The exhibition took place between 4th - 6th October 2024.
Trails Interwoven is a collection of journal entries, film stills, photos, objects, and a work-in-progress short experimental documentary film, that aims to provide insight into the ongoing process and practice of the filmmaker, in creating the final moving-image work. The final film itself is primarily a documentation and exploration of the work and themes of a selection of artists, who have been commissioned for SALT + EARTH Festival over the past 2 years - where themes of the body within the Kent Downs National landscape and its geology are explored in various ways. In the version of the film which is exhibited, the projects featured include The Chalk Path by Alison Neighbour and The Body As Data by Sidonie Carey-Green and Tom Tegato – though the impressions of the projects Magical Curves by Rubiane Maia and Chalk, Grass, Land Josie and Ray Carter, were also an influential part of the way the film is shaped thus far, and will feature fully in the final work.
In assembling and approaching the making of this film, Rhiana chooses to go against the perceived invisibility of the filmmaker within typical documentary film, and alternatively embraces the ways her own geographical, social and historical positioning, most notably her upbringing in Trinidad, influences the way she receives these works. Drawing from political ecology, her reflections and musings in and of the landscapes that surround her, and a desire to cultivate a connection to the natural world, while reflecting on the bodies that meet it, Rhiana delicately feeds these perspectives into the film. She allows the themes of the work is be integrated into the physical making of the film, by using foraged seaweed to develop the Super 8 film, which her wanderings around the land and seascape were recorded on.
As well as for SALT + EARTH 2024, Rhiana created this work-in-progress film as part of her MA in film and performance at Central Saint Martins.
The film is still a work-in-progress.
Images displayed at the Trails Interwoven Exhibition, showing images taken by Rhiana and from her personal family archives.
Images which were taken throughout the crafting of the film, around the Kent Downs coastal areas.
Display showing the seasweed water, foraged from Folkestone to develop the super 8 footage, shot in the same location.
Clip from the work-in-progress film that formed part of the exhibition