The other half is always there (the poetics of ecology)

The project is a meditation on the montage principle as a mechanism through which to think not only about the ecological interconnectedness of the life forms that the images show but also of their poetic dimensions. Early 20th century and avantgarde filmmakers recognized the potential of the montage to create meaning beyond linear storytelling – beyond the mere ‘sum’ of two images. Whereas Sergei Eisenstein explored the intellectual dimensions of editing in this regard, the American avantgarde film maker Maya Deren made a poetic practice of it. For Deren, the montage had the potential to put layers of meaning upon meaning on images. She described this as the vertical montage and contrasted it with the linear montage of storytelling. To give a visible form to something that is invisible – to an emotion, to a feeling or an association – was what defined for Deren the poetic practice of the moving image montage. Following this notion, the layering of meanings in “The other half is always there (the poetics of ecology)” purposefully aims to bring to mind organic processes of birth, growth or metamorphosis. The choice of the motifs, texture and color works to underscore the permeability of matter and shape. It is almost as if the organic life of one image desires to spill over into the other. Along the line that formally both separates and joins two images, the photographs thus ultimately propose material and metaphysical oneness of life on Earth and the invisible principles at wo