the abyss welcomes us

'the abyss welcomes us’ is a poetry film by filmmaker and intermedia artist Michèle Saint-Michel.

The films express a Melvillian sense of much activity without substantial progress, traveling in four dimensions of Anthropocene and Glitch feminism. Music for the work was created as a collaboration with two experimental musicians, Camilo Brun and Greg Nieuwsma.

US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo says that ruin and reinvention are inseparable. But must we give everything like Captain Ahab, or half of our body like the holothurian of Wisława Szymborska’s poem ‘autonomy’? “In danger, the holothurian cuts itself in two. / It abandons one self to a hungry world / and with the other self it flees. // It violently divides into doom and salvation, / retribution and reward, what has been and what will be.

What are we willing to sacrifice for advancement and how many times can we cut ourselves in two? How much healing can one body take? As Szymborska says: We, too, can divide ourselves, it’s true. / But only into flesh and a broken whisper. / Into flesh and poetry. // How will you divide yourself? What are you willing to leave behind?

Abyss Triptych is an experimental, tri-screen film work and includes this film as well as 'the abyss doesnt divide us,’ and ‘the abyss surrounds us.’