The Fortunetellers (2011)

Standing at the front of the dark theater Ellie toggled between video footage and transparencies of photographs sketches maps and diary entries which were projected from a lightbox You could see shadows of her hands against the light as she laid down each image She delivered a monologue which was interspersed with recordings of conversations with the crew and sounds of the Arcticthe groan of polar ice the squeak of an anchor being lowered The narrative had the shape of a boomerang shed begin in the surreal daytoday minutiae of polar life draw tangential connections outwards to mythology archaeology and philosophy then return again to the ice It felt like a haunted dreamversion of those lectures that Victorian explorers would deliver upon returning from the edges of the worldWill Hunt excerpt from interview in The American Reader elliegainfo