Open Air im silent green: Breathing Matter(s) – SWEETGRASS

Sheep as far as the eye can see. The anthropologist and filmmaker Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash spent three summers in the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains documenting sheep farming on one of the last family-owned ranches. When a sheep eats, we see and hear the chewing movement and the sheep's bell. When it discovers the camera, its gaze freezes the image, only the wind can still be heard. The original sound contributes to the accuracy of each shot. During the shearing, we can literally feel the shepherd's physical effort and the sheep's drowsiness. The visual arrangement in the space analyzes the relationship of a newborn to the flock, the mother and the shepherdess. When thousands of sheep walk through a gate or follow the grass trail of a feeder, it looks like a mass scene from a monumental movie. By the time we reach the top of the mountain and the shepherd, suffering from knee pain, calls his mother, our image of the lonely shepherd gives way to that of the western cowboy. Even the coarse humor of the ranchers as they go about their business of branding animals tells a story of how the sheep ranching of the American West that began in the 19th century is slowly coming to an end.
SWEETGRASS is an early work by the Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) at Harvard University, which is headed by Castaing-Taylor and which, if not before, gained international recognition in the film and art scene with Leviathan (2012) that Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel made. The SEL represents a form of cinematic and artistic ethnography that prioritizes sensual and physical experience over linguistic explanation.

The open-air screening of SWEETGRASS will take place on the occasion of the exhibition Breathing Matter(s), which is showing works by Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel in the concrete hall of silent green from 17.7. to 24.8. The exhibition will be accompanied by a program of other long and short films by the SEL as well as listening sessions, performances, public talks and workshops.