Digital, 16 mm, and Double Super 8 footage. Wool, tracing paper and broadleaf plantain on wooden frames.
Soundscape: Anna Katrin Ø. Egilstrøð
Anna Vestergaard Jørgensen:
“Dráttir” has several meanings: when the sea’s edge is drawn inwards and outwards, when clouds move across the sky, to pull and to draw. In Dráttir, a succession of poetic images follow one another: the sea washing over sand and seaweed, camera pans across a landscape, archival material, the moon. The camera’s lens is constantly in motion and searching, sharpening and blurring. But we do not only see; we also hear and feel the fragments of conversation woven into the images. The voices of Eyðunardóttir herself, of the filmmaker Maria Guldbrandsø Tórgarð and of the researcher Turið Nolsøe surge towards us, guiding us through the work. They let us glimpse stories about the Faroe Islands, about abortion – ‘getting the moon-sickness back’ – about power and self-determination. And this self-determination concerns the individual and society alike, for where power and powerlessness are concerned, the personal cannot be separated from the collective. The voices’ accounts move from the deeply personal to the broad lines of history and politics. From the self-determination of the individual female body to the self-determination of the Faroe Islands. ‘The waves breathe,’ says Alda’s voice, and Dráttir breathes in the same way: alive and in motion, without fixed conclusions.