ABIGAIL SEVERANCE
THE EDGE OF THE FLAT EARTH
+ WE THE DEVOTED
Segregate. Protect. Deny. Impress. Forbid. We know the goals of borders and we know their limitations. How might they be transformed? Can they become sites for the imaginative? Devotional? Collaborative? A project of two inter-related films.
The Edge of the Flat Earth (hybrid essay/fiction, pre-prodcution) takes its title from the Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s exquisite collection Electric Light, a work that deftly travels from the observed to the remembered to the imaginative. The film explores the fertile possibilities of the bordlerland through landscape and site specific performance.
We the Devoted (narrative, 10 min, in post), developed collaboratively with its cast of 8 artist-performers. A weary crew inspects an endless border, a job they do each morning. But today, they find a rupture in the wall.
Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant (Ireland, 2020)
Practice & Research Grant, CalArts