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 Sonoma Coast in Northern California, who embody the invisible mycelium network below our feet. Mycelium means “More than one” in New Latin and Greek, and refers to the vegetative part of a fungus, a mass of branching root-like structures. Although invisible, mycelium plays a vital role in decomposing plant material, resisting pathogens, and absorbing water and nutrients. They also help forests absorb carbon pollution, delaying the effects of global warming, and protecting our planet. Therefore, the mycelium network is essential to the well-being of our forests and ecosystems. Similarly, women are the primary caregivers for the well-being our communities, embodying strength, resilience, and connectedness. With an open form— including a ‘readers’ choir, performance, montage, 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.