Pyrolysis

In 2020, Bonny Doon Natural Preserve was destroyed due to a wildfire that erupted in the Santa Cruz Mountains (California). The wildfire complex impacted a huge area and I had to evacuate my home. This experience was very traumatic for me and my family and some elements–such as smoke in the sky–still trigger me today. I made my animation Pyrolysis a few years after this incident when, after visiting the natural preserve, I noticed all the new growth. I decided to make a film that, by superimposing stop motion animation on rear-projected footage shot on location, developed a poetic exploration of the phenomenon of wildfire and its role in the creation of new life. My embodied, gestural practice guided my body as I animated the wool. Through the use of my hands to animate a material that doesn’t hold position of shape very well, I connected with the experience of loss and trauma at a deeper level, and in a way that escapes reason and the intellect. Through stop motion animation–a process that takes days–I was able to sit with the trauma and make it emerge through my body via the use of wool, transform it, and think about my experience differently, connecting it with the land, the environment, and the complexity of the cycle of life/death.