The Fish Factory, Stöðvarfjörður ICELANd, 2021
Iceland’s legacy for storytelling, Norse poetry, mythology, and folk law are renowned worldwide, sparking imaginations for centuries. The Fish Factory residency immersed me into Iceland’s dramatic landscape, the generous spirit of Icelanders, and their culture and language. I was able to write, draw and film a piece of allegorical fiction inspired by the absurdity of Norse Mythology, the Stöðvarfjörður mountains, and my passion for maternal politics. This has been a truly transformative experience, opening myself up to the written word in a new and more literal way. Before I had been exploring storytelling in more abstract terms on film, often drawing on myself as the subject. Now I feel I have progressed into a more imaginative mode of language, one that can relate to my interests and concerns for (institutionalised) motherhood without having to put myself so centrally. What emerged from my month’s residency was a super 8 film, a collection of sculptures, film photography, and a series of ink drawings: originally storyboards for my film, but became works in their own right. The trust and freedom I was given at the Factory allowed me to create work more prolifically and without expectation or inhibition. I was able to weave together a fully formed collection of work that commented on patriarchy and its suppression of women’s reproductive and intellectual knowledge throughout history.
Drawings
sculptures
cREATIVE WRITING
An Allegory of Afl and þekkingu
by Ruby Bateman
In the early hours of time, the Earth was made by two opposing forces, who, for a short period, met together in a moment of harmony.
Giants called Afl, took to building the mountains, gathering and melting rocks upwards with the heat of their giant palms. As their heels dug into the soil, great crevasses started to form which turned into lakes and seas filled by their salty sweat.
The þekkingu however, created the balance of things. They hugged the moon close to make the gentle sway of tides, and with every heart beat and breath, seasons formed and the rhythm of life and death set into place.
The Afl saw the þekkingu’s close connection to these mysteries and for the first time felt lonely, even threatened. They had agonised for so long over the mountains and valleys, created by their own insatiable lust for crushing, moving and squeezing, that they had begun to lose sight of who they were building for. The heat of their power and brute force only perpetuated feelings of agitation and anxiety, and before long, their innermost feelings of vulnerability and deficiency turned to rage and resentment. The mountains themselves started to grow inside of them, bitter and opaque. Rocks crystallised in their eyes and their skulls weighed heavy and igneous. With no sight and nowhere to soothe their anger, hot lava erupted out of the Afl’s heads. Cathartic and unforgiving it spewed out, down their well trod valleys, petrifying the þekkingu below.
All the knowledge of the cosmos, the answers of life and death itself was entombed with the þekkingu in their lava shells. Only in faint glimpses, such as shooting stars do we see and hear the wisdom of their elemental truth, pass by and vanish. To the unknown eye, they are just standing stones in an ever changing landscape, erratic and mysterious. On a closer look you might see the curve of their shoulder, a knuckle or nose, or the original swirl of lava unchanged by entropy. For centuries people have been drawn to these stones, creating temples, towns and finally cities on top. Always returning to their energetic pull, their strange promise, never quite knowing why they are there, or who they once were.
