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Films
I am making digital films as part of my exploration of ways to articulate pain in relation to the Viking Energy Wind Farm (VEWF) in Shetland (UK) and more generally the widespread industrialisation of our place. With some of these films I want to show the passing of time, and consequently some of them are very slow, even two hours. I am add films as I complete them. It has turned out to be a very slow process, so patience is necessary.
Landscape in Pain #164615072023
This film is a short version of a film I originally made in summer 2023. I made it after the wind turbines started to be installed on the Viking Energy Wind Farm in Shetland. While making this film I was thinking of the idea that the Viking Energy Wind Farm is the 21st century clearances as it will result in the depopulation of the area, eventually leaving no population in the vicinity of the turbines. 75% of the wind turbines are within the 2km recommended minimum distance from homes. It is even more disturbing when you consider that many homes, in fact the majority, within this
2 km zone are in fact within 2 km of multiple turbines.
Windlins, 2023
This film is different from my work for the project Landscape in Pain. I made it for another collaborative project, Living in the Landscape, which used the theme of the forest. As Shetland doesn't have a forest culture, I thought about the idea of forest in relation to the Viking Energy Wind Farm. I was struck by the news that by mid-2023 nearly 16 million trees had been felled in Scotland for the construction of wind farms, so it is because there is this connection to wind farms that I've decided to share it here. The word windling (Scots dialect) or windlin in the Shetlaen language embodies ideas of both loss and renewal. A windlin is a bundle of grasses, a sign of both end and beginning, of hope and renewal, as the hay has been harvested and then secured in a bundle for new, productive use. Windling can also mean something that is torn off by the wind, which I think of as being lost to the wind. I link this idea to the sense of loss we are experiencing in Shetland where, paradoxically, the construction of an industrial scale wind farm has opened the doors to large corporations who are aggressively extracting our natural wind resource for shareholders’ profit. We are witnessing widespread loss of wildlife, with species made extinct by the construction process; impact on individual health and well being; damage to our community; cultural heritage and sense of place.
Landscape in pain #046320201113
This film is a very short version of one of the films in Landscape in Pain, a collection of digital drawings and films. The original film is almost two hours long. Photo: Courtesy Sustainable Shetland
Anunder, 2024
Anunder is the second film I made as part of the Living in the Landscape research project which focussed on theme of rivers and energy. The fieldwork took place in Finland, in Finnish Lapland. It explores the beauty of water, whether river, loch, burn or sea, while simultaneously attempting to interrogate what lies hidden beneath the surface of large scale industrial developments instigated by the energy industries, including in Shetland where the landscape lies in a constant state of injury following the construction of the Viking Energy Wind Farm, a massive industrial scale development of 103 wind turbines. The wind farm has contaminated waters and polluted the land. Life has been lost. Fish have disappeared. Invisible storms of microplastics shower land and sea. Noise, infrasound and flicker unremittingly erode wellbeing. Shetland of course is not alone. Other small communities in the northern and Arctic region are similarly sabotaged by the energy industries. Accounts of villages drowned by the Porttipahta Reservoir created through hydropower expansion in Lapland resonate deeply with my fears for the imminent disappearance of communities in Shetland. Horror lingers beneath the surface.
Suffocation.
Disempowerment.
Displacement.
Loss.
Transmission, 2025
This film was made for the international TELEPHONE project, which is based on the idea of the Chinese Whispers game. I made this very short film in response to work that I received by a creative practitioner, who I don’t yet know they are or where they are located in the world because the project hasn’t yet been completed. Their work resonated strongly with Landscape in Pain, my personal response to the construction of the industrial scale Viking Energy Wind Farm on Shetland, where I live and work. The idea of 'transmission' can be widely interpreted. In this film I see the wind turbine as a metaphor for the many complexities embedded in ‘transmission’ from the very personal to the wider implications for whole communities, and the human and more than human.
Bloodlines #5
This film is one of five in Bloodlines, the third series of work I’ve made for Living in the Landscape (LiLa); it forms the third part of a film 'trilogy'. This collection of very short films was included in the exhibition Kindred: Living in the Landscape 2025 at the Helgeland Museum in Nesna, Norway in May 2025. The series of films uses collaged images and sounds from nature, the built environment and the industrial landscape in an attempt to share my sense of loss and injury through the disempowerment, damage and displacement caused by energy developments. They particularly reflect my response to the construction of the large scale industrial wind farm built by Viking Energy in Shetland. Five of the films in this series, and a composite film that brings the individual films together, are featured on cards with QR codes which I have circulated in Nesna, Norway in May 2025. I shared these in Shetland later in 2025.. There is a card for each film. I hope that those who find these cards, initially in Shetland and Nesna, Norway, will feel some kind of kinship as they share the QR cards with friends, family, work colleagues, and so forth. This work was created with the support of a Visual Art and Craft Award: Shetland 2024/25 in partnership with Creative Scotland, Shetland Islands Council and Shetland Arts Development Agency.
Further information about the project Living in the Landscape (LiLa):
LiLa 2025 in Nesna, Norway, Nord Universitet
Lila 2024 in Finnish Lapland, University of Lapland, Finland
Trembling Earth
This film, finally completed after a long gestation period in June 2026, is my first foray into the world of soil. My interest in soil links directly to my desire to investigate what lies hidden beneath the surface of large scale industrial developments linked to the renewable energy industries. My interest has evolved slowly, beginning in Shetland in 2020 when armies of diggers began to excavate tonnes of soil and peat to construct the industrial scale Viking Energy Wind Farm. I am deeply worried by what is hidden from our view through extractivist practices. What is buried, what happens behind the scenes, and underground? I worry about the injury that the land, peat and soil, and its inhabitants incur through industrial scale developments for renewable energy being built across Shetland and all of rural Scotland to tackle the climate crisis. I wonder what we can learn from the soil that can nurture and repair human beings’ reciprocal relationship with the natural world.