Shifting Landscapes - Parlour Collective Surnedal

Shifting landscapes is a project which emerged from a residency in the small town of Surnedal, Norway. It weaves together impressions of the Surnedal landscape, the activities of the town, and the mysterious elements which emerge between these spheres. The narrative contained in the finished film is one of scattered moments, spaced at hypnogogic intervals. At times terrifying, at times sublime, it encourages the viewer to drift through irresistibly. Moving forward with the detachment of a ghost-train among the picture-postcards of places we’ve never inhabited but vaguely recall, blurring into one landscape, not yet immersed, but almost.

Using the frame of the screen to highlight the actions occurring within, we have adopted the ruleset of Buster Keaton’s filmmaking, where immersion and narrative emerge from the visible scene, and its geometry. We make sense of the mysterious surrounding landscapes through acts of play, marking curves, edges and ambience through physicality. The acts become a mechanism for outlining the bodies position in these spaces, it speaks of a circular process of building up and eroding its fixedness and purpose. Each space becomes a site for recovering potential transactions of the body and the imaginary, reclaiming it from the familiar.