Iris, rhizome I is a multimedia visual poem imaginatively inhabiting the perspective of an iris flower. With visuals and direction by Natalia Janula, text and voice by Anna Souter, and sound by David Williams, the piece draws on the iris’ rhizomatic root structure as a model for cross-disciplinary collaboration. The resulting digital-ecological collage uses photogrammetry techniques and found images to consider the iris’ multidirectional unfoldings into the world. Drawing on notions of kinship, vision, geology, and botany, Iris, rhizome I tentatively seeks alternative ways of formulating the self in relation to others.
flag. bearded. snakes-head.
i have been watching, an eye under the sun.
ir-eyes. i rise. rhizome, i.
root-spreading, many-headed, Medusa’s snakes rising from the earth (she who turns all life to stone in the end)
i live in the rainshowers and the boggy places and i am not afraid of my own reflection
or the globe of clear water that gathers on my petals and contains in its membranes the whole world of your reflected eyes.
male and female, i, bearded beauty winking at insects (shaped together by our partnered desires)
colourful goddess, i, one letter containing singularity and multiplicity (yes, i contains multitudes like you)
my words wrap round the world to embrace the tangled beings who will someday be rock
and underneath all is rock and all the flags and banners and marshalling fleur-de-lys will become rock
and i, also, the flag, iris, in your eyes
and then I rise
rhizome, i.
text and voice ^ Anna Souter
sound > David Williams