A Concave Space invites a meditation on oil extraction, mass extinction and our own entangled presents. Reaching out through vegetal eyes, a multi-vocal narrator makes kin with waters, soils and oil slicks to contemplate complexity, complicity and intimate relations amid fossil-fuelled ecological dissonance. Text, sound and cinematography meld to form a spectral interspecies world, filmed across a decommissioned oil field, an active 19th century stonextinction quarry, plantation forests and the petrified remains of a past woodland, rivers, seas and the coastlines that meet them. A Concave Space is a collaboration with speculative writer, artist and scholar Ama Josephine Budge, research-led filmmaker Sonia Levy, interdisciplinary artist and curator April Lin 林森 and Yuin musician Josh Paton.

A Concave Space (2023)
Site-specific three channel 4K video, 6 channel audio, synchronised lighting
19:50 minutes

Cinematography: Sam Smith
Underwater cinematography: Sonia Levy with Sam Smith
Text and voice performance: Ama Josephine Budge
Mudmind host: April Lin 林森
Audio field recording: Sonia Levy, Josh Paton, Sam Smith
Editing, visual effects, sound and lighting design: Sam Smith
Lighting programmer: Jono Boer

Commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales for Volume 2023