Lucy Cordes Engelman

artistiek onderzoek - audiovisueel - ecologie - experimenteel - film - gender - installatie - literair - natuur - sociaal-maatschappelijk - video

I make films and videos, considering 'the cinema' as a space of sensorial ritual and potential communion, but also possible rupture. I have a background in theater / performance and script writing. Currently I'm playing primarily with analog film, digital phone footage, archival records, and fictional writing, enmeshing the 'precious' material of film with the endless digital realm. At times, these multivocal worlds expand beyond the screen and if so they may have a performative element. Often I collaborate with fellow artists, poets, and musicians. I am currently asking questions about fluid fragmentary narratives as escape routes from existing infrastructure. I'm also thinking about ritual as a method of re-enchantment with all that (we) have been violently separated from. I am looking to the tides of the ocean, the flows of converging deltas, both tonic and toxic, as potential guides for other ways of sensing - both theoretically but also materially.


Losing its name, a river enters the sea (2022) - Spec: For this work I converted See Lab into a Cinema/Chapel for a one time ritual+screening. A collective solar ritual spiral walk where guests lit candles was bookended by two short films; She who is close to the SALT/SEA (Super 8 and DV camcorder, 27:00, sound, color) and The Temple of Nehalennia (Super 8, 12:00, sound, color). Thematic sensory snacks were offered and my printed folder/ book/carrier bag of oceanic related findings was shared that was recently completed during a residency at Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium. The ritual+screening at See Lab, Den Haag occured as we observed the sun returning to its astrological home, the sign of Leo -- thus commencing the season of Deep Summer. Our sun, the only star in our solar system, does not have a definite boundary, and so this time of light and warmth reminds us of our own limitless connection to the cosmos. Additionally, the illumination of historically hidden knowledge aligns with See Lab being situated near the coastal area of my ongoing research; the project plumbs the depths of the newly discovered drowned continent of Doggerland that is now the North Sea, an ancient timber circle affectionately called, 'Seahenge', and a Neolithic Netherlands' marine goddess, Nehalennia, whose name translates loosely between, "she who is close to the sea" and "she who is close to the salt"... the evening culminated in a meditative film, carrying an unspoken narrative that draws on the Icelandic myth of a selkie mother returning to her underwater realm. Shot in Iceland and The Netherlands, the footage carries the viewer through a body that is neither strictly land nor strictly sea.
CLOSE TO THE SALT/SEA – Book/folder/carrier bag (2022) - Open view, screen printed folder shown containing a lithograph print, risographs, screenprints, a zine, a book, and newspaper prints, A3 size. A glimpse of the “book” / folder / carrier bag that I worked on at the printmaking residency, Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium. This object contains research relating to the film “Close to the SALT/SEA”. I am working with submerged knowledge, including the drowned land between the Netherlands and Britain (Doggerland), the Neolithic marine goddess, Nehalennia, and the timber ritual circle referred to as Seahenge… it’s intended to be held, touched, and reproduced in myriad ways— and is the perfect antidote in my mind to the dusty old tomes of dominant history that must be handled with gloves etc.
The Temple of Nehalennia (2022) - Super 8 projected with sound. In the lowlands of Zeeland, a furious storm washes away the sand dunes to reveal the remnants of a neolithic temple devoted to an ocean goddess -- Nehalennia. Drawing on texts from Ada Hondius Crone and Astrida Neimanis, this work explores archaeological research of alternative historical relationships that Neolithic people living in what is now the Netherlands had with water. Enmeshing this research within a hydrofeminist ecological critique, the work simultaneously acknowledges the limitations of traditional scientific approaches – and proposes other ways embodied knowledge might thrive. Refusing closure, the haptic film fragments and continually blurs, opening space for an encounter with the unknown. The traditional folk song, sung by folk group, Skandinieki, is in Livonian (an extinct and nearly forgotten language). It alludes to a prior relationship people had to water as the words are a direct address to the rain – “Please rain, don’t pour down on us the whole day…” Sound Compositions: Allie Armstrong and Lucy Cordes Engelman Instrumental Music: Galatea, by Igor Yachmenov with permission by the artist Vocal Music: Traditional Livonian folk song, sung by folk group, Skandinieki. Texts: Ada Hondius Crone, The Temple of Nehalennia at Domburg, 1955 Astrida Neimanis, Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water, 2012 Lucy Cordes Engelman, Temple, Altar, Imprint -- 2020
Earth Remembered Me (love-lies-bleeding) (2021) - Installation view, The POLE, Rotterdam. Looped projection of Super 8 transferred to HD, 05:21, colour, sound. Audio arrangement 1:20:00 on loop. Mirror, plants, bedframe. What does it mean to be dreamt rather than to dream? To be claimed by a place? To be in direct experience with specificity of land. The wilderness calls to us, to rejoin the more than human world, and as part of this process we find ourselves confronted with evidence of ancient rituals and other ways of being in communion with the thriving animate cosmos. Knowledge transferred in touch and breath. Through artistic research I seek what lies hidden beneath, within stone, tree, water, and animal, and also my own consciousness. To reconnect and be made knowable, to sense, shift, and expand beyond my limited self. I spent two to three weeks researching the ancient giant hunebedden in Drenthe as I prepared to partake in a wilderness vigil visiting these stone formations. In tandem with trying to understand these megaliths, I worked with the writings of eco spiritual philosopher Joanna Macy and the poets Mary Oliver and Bhanu Kapil. I did preliminary readings, listened to lectures and excavated data and records, spoke to local archaeologists and geographers about their conclusions and also sought pagan mythology surrounding the accepted and also fringe theories of the hunebedden. Who or what made them? Were they solely for burials or were there any other purposes? Is memory and mourning inscribed in stone?
Love-lies-bleeding (2021) - Object view, wooden pole, wool yarn, love-lies-bleeding dried plant, thread, dried roses, ink, dried dahlias. I spent two to three weeks researching the ancient giant hunebedden in Drenthe as I prepared to partake in a wilderness vigil visiting these stone formations. In tandem with trying to understand these megaliths, I worked with the writings of eco spiritual philosopher Joanna Macy and the poets Mary Oliver and Bhanu Kapil. I did preliminary readings, listened to lectures and excavated data and records, spoke to local archaeologists and geographers about their conclusions and also sought pagan mythology surrounding the accepted and also fringe theories of the hunebedden. Who or what made them? Were they solely for burials or were there any other purposes? Is memory and mourning inscribed in stone?
The Taste Undid Our Eyes! (2020) - Super 8 transferred to HD video with mobile phone footage, 7:09. With Stephanie Sibbald - Editing Allie Armstrong - Compositions Zewiditu Jewel - VO Moon/June Hyeisoo Kim - VO Desire/Visions Of Alejandra Lopez -Visions Of Naomi Hattler - VO August Colleen Cordes - VO Distance Daniel Mullen - Camera Red Dancer Wim van Egmond - Microbe Footage original Special thanks to Marg Van Eenbergen Thanks to ARTIS Micropia and Super 8 Reversal Lab
Water Drips, Vanishes (2020) - Super 8 transferred to digital video, 3:32. A short collaborative work between myself and artist Zewiditu Jewel, shot on location at my childhood home in the same town where Zewiditu was born. A poem film that ruminates on the experience of returning home to find that things have inevitably changed, the grass has died, the house was sold, the beach disappeared and was washed away due to the rising seas...
THESE HAUNTING BODILY DREAMS: Fragments of Cinema, Feminism, and Sensuous Ecology (2019) - Honorable Mention KABK MA Thesis Prize. Small book on recycled paper, 155 pages, 25 copies. Dimensions: 18cmX13cmX2cm. Born of writings between three fictional filmmakers, this novella takes the nebulous form of an ongoing rumination -- or meditation, or meandering -- through a personal genealogy of feminist, haptic, and queer cinemas that brush up against each other. Focusing on thresholds of movement bridging the once, the here now, and the almost, this body of work proposes that there might be an opening in such alternative ways of both making and viewing films that invite us to encounter the world anew. In a sensorial, ecologically committed, feminist filmic ‘elsewhere’ there might be a means of reconnecting to and recalling our deep dependence on the wider-than-human world as we reckon with climatic shifts.
OPTICAL? ORALITY? ORACLE! (2019) - Winner KABK - MAR Department Award. Installation view. Three channel film with daily screenings on the hour, 15:30. Solastalgia Cinema/Chapel (Installation space). Three canvas screens at 160cmX120cm, hanging cheesecloth, soundproof insulation floor, jute mat, cast off rug, colored tissue paper, plywood table, shells, stones, candles, jambu liquor, a film, and a glass of water. Dimensions of space: variable.
SARA, BY ASTRID — ROOM #2 (2018) - Installation view. Three channel video on TV monitors (videos on loop at 1:15:00), shag carpet, white shelf, candle, grey faux vinyl linoleum, grey wash/white mesh curtains, mirror, beige mat, faded pink ball cap, fake rose, real rose, white number “2”. Dimensions of room: 3x2 meters (height: 2.4 meters). A 3-channel "feature" film functioning as a shifting docudrama. An investigation into the fragmentation of narrative through a breakdown of self and subject. The typical relationship between filmed and filmmaker is destabilized. Here, the ‘road trip’ doesn’t follow a linear progression. It's not about knowing the whole story, but the disintegration and disorientation that is held within the reverberations of trauma.