Visual description of Drive-In Movie for Leaf Litter, an animation/audio installation.

Drive-In Movie for Leaf Litter* is an animation-audio installation that portrays the fecund, precarious and mysterious world of the forest floor. It speaks to kinship with other species and the persistence of nature, while plunging us into the uncertainty and instability of this ecological and political moment.

The audience sits on low stools on the front side of a rear projection screen. They are on eye level with the forest floor, reminiscent of childhood. Behind the screen, there is a rotating platform that holds leaf litter. The animation is projected through the platform, casting a leafy shadow that merges with the silhouette animation. The audience witnesses a variety of species navigating their lives within an unpredictable habitat, as shadows of slowly revolving leaves, twigs and fallen plants cycle by. The immersive soundscape, a blend of field recordings and effects, amplifies the sense of presence in the environment.

This 9 minute looping work is presented inside a circle vignette, suggesting a portal to an unseen world that invites one to linger, discover and dream. Like early shadow puppets, silhouettes remove specificity and open space for contemplation. The cycling leaf litter casts a hypnotic spell, yet the flow is punctuated with disruptions and disappearances. To quote James Baldwin, “You’ve got to remember that everything you are looking at is also you.” This intimate experience is intended to foster empathy for and feeling of interconnectedness with other beings, and to invite us to consider our own strategies for persisting and flourishing in an uncertain world.

 * Leaf litter is all the has fallen on the forest floor.