Howe Are you Island?
Co-directors: Alisha Piercy and Frances Adair Mckenzie
Text: Alisha Piercy
Animation: Frances Adair Mckenzie
Sound Design: Benjamin IV
Composition: Orin Piercy
In the speculative short Howe Are You Island? a melodic voice-over travels through a landscape of interspecies relations, an ecology both real and digital. Shot on Ka-ou-enesegoan (Howe Island) in the lake district of Ontario (Canada), we follow our unseen, possibly nonhuman protagonist through the pangs of trying to connect. In the face of wonder and desire, interspecies relations progress with a glitch. Past the veil of romance, while crossing over shared lands, doubt erupts over the ability to bond in mutual, meaningful ways. What must be given, or given up?
A critical fabulation, Howe Are You Island? wonders over the troubles of our living ways, to prefigure: which future connection with the environment and other species is possible?