Macdonald, A., 2014.

What I rely on Solo Moving image exhibition

What I rely on is a trilogy of screendance works, made between 2010 and 2013, that balance the pleasure of the apparent immediacy of film with the anxieties that can underlie the act of digital preservation. They look at the way people deal with uncertainty and transience in their lives and were made as a response to the loss of my first baby.

The first work, Things that start slowly (9m36s), is a triptych shot over two years. The central image, of a feeding baby, is contained on either side by images of women, first in early pregnancy and then later at full-term. Over the images, someone is heard talking about the relative lengths of time that different phenomena last.

The second film was shot entirely on one day, the day when I thought I might be pregnant again. Snow film (4m25s) offers a moment of stillness, on a bright morning with snow on the ground, before the question of whether I was pregnant or not was answered and a new and relentless narrative began.

For the final film of the trilogy, seven people were invited to try and catch the leaves falling from trees in Autumn 2012. It is impossible to predict when leaves will fall, but equally hard not to believe that, if you just wait long enough, or look attentively enough, you won't eventually get one. Footage of the event was used to make I will not hope (7m8s), a film that embraces both the anxiety and joy of transience.