Wild Geese 2: Wilder Geese
Details
Artist: Elinor O’Donovan
Title: Wild Geese 2: Wilder Geese
Year: 2023
Duration: 4:01 minutes
Medium: Single-channel video with stereo sound
Credit: Elinor O’Donovan, Wild Geese 2: Wilder Geese, 2023. Single-channel video with stereo sound, 4 minutes 1 second. Courtesy the artist. Selected for AFI’25 by Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland.
Wild Geese 2: Wilder Geese (2023)
Elinor O’Donovan
Selected for AFI'25 by Crawford Art Gallery
Filmed in Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland, Elinor O’Donovan’s film is a playful response to the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver (1935-2019), contemplating the extent to which the universe is concerned with our individual problems. Featuring Barry Manilow, cosmic nihilism and the self-involved thoughts of Wild Geese, the short film expounds the idea that the worlds we inhabit are constructed by inherited stories and cultural narratives.
Expanding on Oliver’s poem, O’Donovan, mischievously yet searchingly, questions ideas of knowledge, memory and truth, and - as the artist writes - "in a light-hearted way, plays with the idea of cosmic nihilism: what if instead of the universe being indifferent to our existence as some people believe it to be, it is 'overly' concerned?”
Much of O’Donovan’s practice depends on the cultural contexts and references she recycles as methods of meaning-making through examining how micro-details reveal macro-narratives. An aesthetic of neoteny, typified by unresolved or juvenile forms, characterises her presentations and her work often creates glimpses of speculative worlds where things might be different if alternative questions are explored. In the case of this film, what if humanity could be overly concerned about the planet’s existence?
Dawn Williams Curator, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, says:
Elinor O'Donovan's film exquisitely captures the playful gap between fact and fiction inherent within 'Dream States'. Amongst other propositions, the film transforms our reasoning of the natural world, to imagine an actively all seeing, eye-popping, intuitive and compassionate earth in contrast to the dispassionate humanity who reside. O'Donovan offers a tantalising dream-state existence where empathy might live.
Elinor O’Donovan, Wild Geese 2: Wilder Geese, 2023. Single-channel video with stereo sound, 4 minutes 1 second. Courtesy the artist. Selected for AFI’25 by Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland.
Elinor O’Donovan, Wild Geese 2: Wilder Geese, 2023. Single-channel video with stereo sound, 4 minutes 1 second. Courtesy the artist. Selected for AFI’25 by Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland.
Elinor O’Donovan, Wild Geese 2: Wilder Geese, 2023. Single-channel video with stereo sound, 4 minutes 1 second. Courtesy the artist. Selected for AFI’25 by Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland.
Elinor O’Donovan, Wild Geese 2: Wilder Geese, 2023. Single-channel video with stereo sound, 4 minutes 1 second. Courtesy the artist. Selected for AFI’25 by Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland.
Artist Q&A
What does a democratic, international film programme such as Artists' Film International, mean to you as an artist?
I am always grateful for the opportunity to show my work internationally. My work, which so much depends on the cultural contexts and references I recycle as methods of meaning-making, by being tested in settings and to people who might be unfamiliar with the pop-cultural shorthand Iuse, affirms to me in new ways the idea that the worlds we inhabit are constructed by stories.This extends to the idea of democracy, a story which has been told and retold for centuries.For us to consider any international curated programme democratic, we must ask whose voices are included and whose are excluded? The spirit of democracy in theory necessitates equal representation of all people’s voices, but when I consider my Irish colleagues in Germany, for example, who have been censored because of their support for Palestine, I fail to see democracy at work. The organisations which participate in Artists’ Film International are subject to the geopolitical pressures and conventions of their countries, and until artists working in these participating countries are free to express their solidarity with all oppressed people, including Palestinians, to what extent may we consider ourselves democratic?
What compels you to work with moving image, and when did you first become interested in the medium?
As someone who is very interested in working through lots of different mediums, film and moving image allows me at different times to combine aspects of the visual, audio and spatial making that I enjoy. I often use writing as a starting point to generate ideas, and I find that lends itself to filmmaking. I made my first short in 2023 (‘The Immeasurable Grief of the Prawn’) and since then film and moving image have become central in my practice.
Can you speak about the potential that dreaming and altered states of reality offer individuals and societies? How do you feel this is reflected in filmmaking and in your artwork specifically?
I believe that the worlds we inhabit are constructed by inherited stories, and that it is very possible for these worlds to be fundamentally altered by imagining something else. If it’s possibleto imagine something else, then it is possible for that something else to be. Wild Geese 2: Wilder Geese explores this in a light-hearted way, playing with the idea of cosmic nihilism (“what if instead of the universe being indifferent to our existence as some people believe it to be, it is overly concerned”). To some extent the capitalist-realist truism ‘it is easier to imagine the end of the world than imagine the end of capitalism’ is right, but what if we continued to imagine acapitalism-ending world into being anyway?
Please share a list of books, music, films, artworks, thinkers, spaces and places that inspire your practice, and in particular have fed into your thinking around this film.
This film is a response to the poem ‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver, and wasfilmed while onresidency at the Fish Factory in Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland, which I loved. Aside from these, and inno particular order, ‘The Summer Book’ by Tove Jansson, ‘Grosse Fatigue’ by Camille Henrot,‘The Gastronomical Me’ by MFK Fisher, ‘Tampopo’ directed by Juzo Itami, and ‘The Visitors’ by Ragnar Kjartansson each scratch a particular funny romantic itch in my brain.
What new projects or lines of research are currently preoccupying you?
I am currently researching a new project concerning the migration of women from Ireland to theUnited States in the late 19th-century in tandem with the migration of plant matter. This is framed by the story of my great-great-great-great aunt, Charlotte Grace O’Brien, a writer and botanist who campaigned on behalf of emigrant women to improve their living, working, and travel conditions.
Details
Artist: Elinor O’Donovan
Title: Wild Geese 2: Wilder Geese
Year: 2023
Duration: 4:01 minutes
Medium: Single-channel video with stereo sound
Credit: Elinor O’Donovan, Wild Geese 2: Wilder Geese, 2023. Single-channel video with stereo sound, 4 minutes 1 second. Courtesy the artist. Selected for AFI’25 by Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland.