There;Done.

(1999) 16mm/S8, 15 minutes.

An elliptical travelogue in six languages merging fantasy, cartoon, legend and dream. Arriving at each new country the traveler finds a past she did not know she had. Landscape and identity are in constant transformation as she assumes the roles of spy, praying mantis, demolition expert and thief in an anarchistic exploration of mythologies of the odyssey and the home. Shot in the Anza Borrego desert and the town of Jacumba.

The changing of language changes the shapes that the tongue takes – the rhythm of the gait, the weight of the limbs, the rhythm of the breath. When we speak another language we enter another body. The perception of a wall of words, a code impossible to access, is most palpable for the immigrant to a new country. The initial inaccessibility of a new language and code of behavior offers a possibility of discovery and transformation. In this piece, text that is heard in one language is often repeated later in another language - a further exploration of the different processes involved in the derivation of meaning. There is no native language or subtitle, and the road sign might as easily be in Japanese as in Italian. Each language acts as a different skin or envelope: depending on the viewer, a particular language may interact with image as an element of pure sound.

Camera: Rebecca Baron, Baba Hillman.

Additional camerawork: Adele Horne, Rian Brown.

Cast: Boris Czigany, Baba Hillman, Phoebe Landrum-Schaub, Wendell Kling, Lisa Groth, Rachel Mayeri, Laura Nix, Yumiko Tokuyama, Andrew West

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