Abstract/Summary

Watershed is a short film that begins a mapping of the River Cole in Birmingham, UK, through foraging, dyeing and walking its length. This work combines fictionalised, scientific and historical narratives of water, pollution, and contagion, particularly within the 2020 viral crisis, towards a utopian proposal of bodies’ capacity for survival when viscerally re-connected with our immediate environments. Watershed reflects my overlapping interest in ecologies and queer survival strategies. In 2019, I visited the Arctic Circle and produced a project that reframes horror and science-fiction tropes of ancient viruses emerging from ice via contemporary realities of the climate crisis. This short film extends the project on a conceptual and methodological level: Linda altered their hand-sewn Arctic costume – a mask made from fabric dyed with local flowers, a hoop skirt with a two-metre circumference – to fit the requirements of the current crisis, and incorporated foraged objects (flowers, feathers, string, sticks, bottle lids) towards an intimate non-division of my body and the river.