Landfill (2011)

Overview

A site specific performance piece for camera, filmed on location at Beachy Head, a metaphor for our collective headlong rush over the edge when it comes to our dealings with the environment. But rather than a decisive leap off the cliff, the piece has a much slower, more erosive pace with Paris and Hill gradually sinking in a deep fissure near the cliff edge. Seemingly oblivious, they chat bravely on mixing the banal with specific personal fixations on environment. Time-lapse cinematography marks time passing, clouds and shadows moving as the women slowly descend into the earth. They are very positive, very upbeat, but their sinking is inevitable. They keep talking until they are no longer visible; the last sentence breathed out through a crack in the earth and carried off in the wind. Then they are gone without a trace, and the viewer is confronted with the precipice, which in their absence becomes the foreground rather than the background.