Caustics2025 - Pre-production
Caustics is a new experimental documentary filming in summer 2025, commissioned by COUSIN Collective.
Caustics is an experimental documentary video work examining non-linear time from a nehiyaw (Plains Cree) cosmological perspective. Inspired by the concept of “indian time,” this project is a reflection on the nature of diffracted time, geologic time, agential consciousness, and the non-linear paths towards healing intergenerational trauma across family histories and oral archives, weaved together through teachings and prophecies told by Ken Roan, a prominent Elder and community leader from Ermineskin Cree Nation. Caustics is inspired by the works/films/writings of Carlo Rovelli, Karen Barad, Deborah Stratman, Sky Hopinka, Jacquelyn Mills, Jane Bennett, and Liz Howard. Caustics explores memories carried through colonial resistance and survivance, and presents an offering for a “place-based” deconstruction of time, ultimately revealing a truth rooted within both nehiyaw teachings and within quantum interpretations of consciousness: the movement of time is a construct being created through our experiencing of it, and through our embodied relations to the fluid movement of land.