Observed Ecologies

Limited capacity, please book your free tickets here

A programme of short films exploring the interconnections between human activity and the natural environment, selected from Braziers International Film Festival by Nick Jordan.

Accompanying the group exhibition SPARK: Artist Interventions in a Time of Crisis (Rogue Project Space, Dec 8 2023 – Jan 13 2024) @sparkartistsnetwork

Damp Moss, Christopher Thompson, 2023, 4:22
“It’s 9am. You wake up on the forest floor. Gentle rain taps your skin. You are sinking into mud. Bugs begin to crawl over your body…”

Some Things We Tended, dir Mars Saude, 2023, 10:00
The future of food production in a changing climate, through 16mm documentation of two sites in mid Wales: an automated research greenhouse and a small-scale organic market garden.

The Wool Aliens, dir Julia Parks, 2023, 27:45
A journey into the social, ecological and tactile entanglements between sheep’s wool, migrant plants and the River Tweed.

**INTERMISSION**

Exoskeletons, dir Mariana Castiñeiras, 2022, 17:49
A filmmaker who struggles with her fear of insects meets a neurologist with a peculiar obsession for beetles.

Guadiana in Four Movements, dir Pedro F Neto & Burak Korkmaz, 2022, 13:45
Explores the present and future of the estuary of the transboundary Guadiana River on the Iberian Peninsula, with data sonification based on current climate models.

Endling, dir Caroline Vitzthum, 2021, 8:44
A portrait of the cultivation and ecological impact of flax, and its symbiotic interconnectedness with many species of insects under threat of extinction.

SPARK was set up by Castlefield Gallery in 2022 to bring together artists wanting to intervene in the climate crisis. SPARK #18 follows on from Castlefield Gallery’s SUSTAIN programme focussed on low carbon artmaking and from the first seventeen SPARK sessions at Manchester Art Gallery, Rogue, The Birley (Preston), Eccles Friends Meeting House, Manchester Museum, AIR Gallery, Paradise Works, Editional Studio, Cadishead and Little Woolden Moss, Gallery Oldham and the John Rylands Library. The SPARK sessions are intended to help seed a new Greater Manchester/North West-based network of artists working low carbon.