September 2015

Eve in Sheepland is a dark comedy in 9 short scenes inspired by a medieval manuscript illumination of Eden discovered on the Internet. It was filmed as a live, unscripted performance on a sheep farm in New York State (US) in 2015 and completed this year. Two characters Eve and Adam, time travelers, find themselves on the farm. Naked and unashamed, befuddled and doomed they interact with the sheep, they learn to be human and they die. Together the scenes reveal the sheep’s bodily sense of vulnerability (and panic) as well as their profound knowledge of earth and death that we humans find too much to bear. The film explores our current ecological catastrophe through the lens of history and myth touching on the paradox of the biblical earthly utopia Eden and what that myth darkly foretold. Dominion, expulsion, aren’t these the very tropes that define our ties to planet earth? Eve was inspired by Derrida’s L’Animal que donc je suis (ti suivre), that begins at the beginning with the curious tale of Genesis, with nudity and shame and the question of the animal.