The Primal Wound (2024)

The primal wound is the wound that results from separating a newborn from its mother. Foundational loss, the preverbal, viscerally imprinted one, experienced during and after the separation, when we are cast out of that oceanic, warm sound bath of the womb into an unknown sensory experience of being and longing. Mother first becoming Other, then Other becoming Mother. Pursued what couldn't flee. And we are from that point on forever adrift, sensing, searching. It is that loss, a double loss when it comes to adoption, that triggers desire. All our desires forever after. It's terrifying to accept the essential otherness of the people who care for us. That uncrossable distance. One gap closed, opened another and another opened through which our waters cannot mould. When desire first wounded me, I considered how best to bear it. I began with adapting and secrecy - but there's no trusting the tongue, it loved to punish others and draw disaster on itself. The Welsh word 'hiraeth' describes a homesickness for a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief of the lost places from our past. 'Bêmal' in my mother's tongue, means 'heimatlos' (without home). Letting go of that chase for an identity, for be-longing, can be liberating, but there is no gutting out the loss. If death does not separate us; but instead unites us and life is the thing that separates us so violently, may our waters become one again when we are returned to the earth.

The video work was shown at Light Beams Under A Bridge, Vol. 10, on 12 Sept 2024 in King's Cross, London.

It is part of the Lift-Off Film Festival, a monthly online showcase dedicated to screening globally submitted indie shorts and features from new voices, currently available to watch on demand via this link: https://checkout.liftoff.network/new-voices-ft-sessions-september/.