The intimacy of Strangers

A film that moves through microscope lichen landscapes, found on a rock in a fence at Trondenes in Harstad, Norway.
Commissioned by Arctic Moving Image and Film Festival AMIFF 2022.
Running time: 10 min
Film and soundtrack by HC Gilje, with drums by Justin Bennett.

Screenings:
Sonic Acts Biennial, NL oct 7-9th
AMIFF, NO oct 14-14th
Kunstrum Fyn, DK nov 7th

Apart from the extreme variations in appearance, textures and color, lichens have become the poster organisms for a new biology which challenges the idea of the individual and supplements the theory of evolution. They also expose the limits of human knowledge, something explored in the writings of Alexander Bogdanov, Lynn Margulis, Donna Haraway and Merlin Sheldrake among others.

Lichen eat rock: Through a process called weathering they grow into the rock and inject strong chemicals and mine it for minerals that then becomes part of the eco system (and might end up in your body at some point). When lichen die they become the first nutrient-rich layer of soil on new land (and the oldest dated lichen is 9000 years old).

The most striking thing is that lichen is not one organism, but a symbiosis of several organisms from different kingdoms: Mainly a fungi that partners up with a photosynthesising organism (either algae or bacteria).
In the context of evolution, when a branch diverges from another branch on the tree life this means that a new organism with slighly different traits have evolved from its parent branch. What is going on with the lichen is that branches from completely different parts of the tree converge, or grow together, acquiring a completely new set of traits.

The film was created using a custom made computer-controlled mechanical stage and a digital microscope. Almost 50000 microscope images were stacked and stitched together into miniature lichen landscapes.
In this blog-post you can read about lichen, inspirations and the making of the film.