How amazingly unlikely is your birth (Clare Samuel)
15min 13s – Circular Projection
Synopsis
What could a cosmology of one person’s life look like? A daughter examines the life and premature death of her father, who had a troubled relationship with the psychiatric medical establishment and was passionate about ecology, politics and space travel.
Artist Statement
‘How amazingly unlikely is your birth’ revolves around the life and death of my father. It reflects on his passionate environmental activism, obsession with space travel, and his experiences of living with schizophrenia and interactions with the mental health service in Northern Ireland where he lived. The work is pieced together from footage of the time around his funeral, letters, medical imaging, his political leaflets, and animated stills of his chaotic apartment as I cleared it out. It is the journey of a daughter combing through the life of an enigmatic father, and an exploration of the fragility and preciousness of life on earth.
Clare Samuel
Clare Samuel is an artist, writer and curator originally from Northern Ireland, now liviing in Toronto on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. She holds a BFA from Toronto Metropolitan University and an MFA from Concordia University, and works primarily with still and moving images . Her work has been exhibited and screening nationally and internationally, most recently at European Media Arts Festival (Germany), OBORO (Montreal), Belfast Exposed (Northern Ireland) and A Space gallery (Toronto).