Cagarros Assembly

I look to natural phenomena, like oceanic gyres, as a way to think about narrative. The world of my film Gyres includes knowledge gleaned through ocean debris and rituals on Greek islands, drifting alongside refugee migration and meditations on personal loss through objects left behind. Quarries tells fragmented stories about the relationship between stone and hand: from the earliest stone tools, to stone as a source of punishment, propaganda, or agency. Cagarros Assembly begins as a fascination with the seabird’s lifecycle. Cagarro chicks are born visually impaired; hundreds crash into artificial lights on the way to a life at sea; and survivors return to land only briefly once a year. The bird is also famous for its eerie vocalizations, a recognizable sound for many inhabitants. Yet this sound often goes ignored, since the birds are rarely seen. A small number of volunteers and scientists connect the bird to the politics of public lighting, the dominance of vision in society, and to the rescue of animals as a way to find meaning.

“To the process of rescue,” writes Walter Benjamin, “belongs the firm, seemingly brutal grasp.” The filmmaker engages in a kind of rescue work, salvaging and arranging fragments. But salvaging requires a grasp that is decisive, and not without violence. The same is true of animal rescue. What does this firm seemingly brutal grasp tell us about the birds, about ourselves, and about the need for rescue?