more than one, 2024

Video Installation with sound, TRT 7 min.

Participants: Paddy Batchelder, Liza Carolina Brown, Linda Eastman, Christina Gonzalez, Pamela Holmes, Linda Lipkin, Jill Nussinow, Mandie Quark, Monique Risch-Meade and Jill Silliphant

Cinematography: Bia Gayotto and Craig Tooley

Reader's Choir Director: Sara Roberts

Animation & VFX: Takashi Takeoka

Editorial Consultant: Susan Crutcher

Music Composition & Studio Production: Luiz Gayotto and Rovilson Pascoal

Soloist: Tuca Fernandes

Sound Consultant: Andy Wiskes

Made with the support of Investing in Artists Grant for the Center for Cultural Innovation.

​This short experimental film is inspired by a group of women mushroom foragers living on The Sea Ranch, Timber Cove and Anchor Bay, who embody the invisible mycelia network below our feet. The tittle “More than one” means mycelium in New Latin and Greek, which refers to the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a mass of branching, root-like structure. Although invisible, mycelium plays a vital role in absorbing water and nutrient, decomposing plant material and resisting pathogens. They also help forests absorb carbon pollution, delaying the effects of global warming, and protecting our planet. Like the fungi, women are primary caregivers helping to care for the well-being of our communities. With an open form— including a ‘readers’ choir, performance, montage, animation, and VFX— the work stimulates sensory and contemplative responses, evoking inter-relationships between the women, the mycelium and the forest, micro and macrocosm, real and imaginary.