Two films of nature by Vanessa Renwick, with scores by The Untamed Musicians Tara Jane O’ Neil and Daniel Menche. Live performance by Tara Jane O’Neil. Presented in collaboration with the Ashland Independent Film Festival.

Hope and Prey features stunning wildlife cinematography of animals hunting and being hunted, transformed through black and white high-contrast recomposition. The viewer is placed in a landscape inhabited by predators. As Renwick writes, “In this installation the audience definitely has to keep an eye out for danger.” Hope and Prey has been described in The Brooklyn Rail as “a slow build toward oblivion that summons the awesome grandeur and the cold horror of the wild.” Portland-based Daniel Menche composed the score.
Medusa Smack reminds us of our long ago origins as sea organisms, and invites installation visitors to return the sea floor and float among our cousins. A lovely diaphanous tent in jellyfish shape is suspended above large soft pillows, upon which one can recline and view the dreamy images of a smack, or group, of moon jellies and sea nettles drifting above. This video installation features a score composed and performed by Tara Jane O’Neil.