Migrants

Single channel video · 2021
 

Video

Video excerpt · 0:50 min.
(Headphones recommended)

Text
4K · 16:9 · colour · stereo · 5:30 min. · 2021

The Video Migrants deals with the topic of borders and their transgression. The starting point is the evening return of tens of thousands of migratory birds to their roosts in the Dollart, a bay formed by storm tides in the German-Dutch border region. They spend the winter months here to escape the Arctic cold of their summer breeding grounds.

In search of food, the birds daily cross the political borders that are irrelevant to them, orienting themselves instead on the great landscape lines that are constantly in motion and shifting against each other in the Wadden Sea.

In the montage, the theme of the border is taken up and transferred into a temporal grid: a cut is made every second. Within this frame, an almost continuous movement is described with the use of disparate shots: from approach to landing, from day to night and from an agricultural environment to a dystopian, post-industrial backdrop.