For more than a decade now, each new work from Argentine-British artist-filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland arrives bearing the promise of discovery. Sumptuous, enchanting and impressionistically edited, her gallery pieces and short to mid-length films are informed by notions of exploration and adventure, sensorily attuned to the processes through which revelations can be excavated.

Rinland’s work asserts its tactility. In both of the films in our double bill, we rarely see the faces of the skilled technicians and ecological pathfinders drawn from her extensive research. Instead, the watchful camera is closely fixed on their hands at work. Whether interrogating organic samples in Black Pond or engaged in the methodical, precise conservation practices of Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another, the effect is hypnotic, drawing out meaning from the very proximity of our gaze.

From the warm, bubbling liquidity of the 16mm grain to the aural intoxication of the intricate Foley effects, the hands-on means by which Rinland’s subjects engage in their practice is echoed in the artisanal approach to the object of the film itself. The hot pink nail varnish we see in Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another belongs to Rinland, a testament to the unseen female practitioners working in the field of conservation. Alongside a deep, empathetic kinship with the natural world, questions of gender, friendship, and community ring through her body of work. It’s a profoundly singular and personal cinematic project, but one acutely mindful of all the other hands that make it possible.

Eeshwar Nivas

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Eeshwar Nivas India, 1999