Stork Fiction

Can art and design create novel bridges with other living beings and repair bonds broken by centuries of anthropocentrism? Can they help us understand the ways of inhabiting the world of other-than-human animals so that we might establish new manners of cohabitation with them? Philosophers Vinciane Despret and Donna Haraway suggest that the creation of anticipatory stories – stories mixing fiction and reality – can allow us to imagine new forms of interaction with the other-than-human world.

Following Despret and Haraway’s intuition, Stork Fiction is a dance-film celebrating the white storks that populate the estuary of the Charente River (France) and that are stopping their transcontinental migrations because of Climate Change. Directed by Mehdi & Nourddine Sli, and shot in the Charente region, the film evokes a day in the life of a couple of white storks (interpreted by the two dancers Jasmin Sisti and Léone Salinas Muñiz). From their slow awakening at sunrise, the two take a symbolic flight that brings them in contact with a group of humans who are building a series of nests for them. This encounter is followed by a moment of dense oneiric flight, before the two end their day with an intimate mating dance at sunset.

Combining handheld camera movements, drone shots, and steady sequences, the film is an invitation to the audience to slow down and attend to the otherness of these birds from a creative and poetic perspective.