S2.E5 ∙ Sofia 747SP

For millennia, art has concerned itself with the natural world. Our relationship to nature-our awe of, fear of, love of, and worship of nature has been the animating force behind uncountable numbers of artworks, poems, pieces of music and songs. Put another way, nature is one of the great subjects of art. This has been especially the case since the late 18th century, when the concept of awe at the immense, inhuman and unforgiving spectacle of nature became thematized in the concept of the sublime. SONG OF EXTINCTION is a 45-minute film and music piece, envisioned as a part of this very long lineage, with the telling and tragic difference that any work concerned with the natural world in 2017 must necessarily be seen as a work created in the midst of, and in response to, an incommensurate ecological crisis. The work was conceived in 2015 by myself and the composer Rose Bolton, as a particular and unique type of experimental film. Forgoing obvious "experimental" techniques that pertain to the manipulation of form and materiality, the film and the music, working seamlessly together, seek to rather produce an experiment in generating emotion.

Segment 1: "Bip, piéton de Paris". Bip goes for a facetious walk through the streets of Paris. Segment 2: "In a Silent Way, exercices''. Marcel Marceau does mime exercises. Segment 3: "La cage". The mime finds himself imprisoned in an invisible cage. Segment 4: "Lignage et filiation" and 5: "...Cousinages et parentèles": Marcel Marceau pays tribute to his great predecessors. Segment 6: "La création du monde". The creation of the world evoked through the art of mime. Segment 7: "La bonne nouvelle". Jesus and His message evoked through the art of mime. Segment 8: "Les sept péchés capitaux". The seven deadly sins evoked through Marceau's drawings and his art of mime. Segment 9: "Bip et la marchand de masques". At the fun fair, Bip buys a grinning mask he cannot get rid of. Segment 10: "L'école du mime". A masterclass by Marcel Marceau,at his Théâtre de L'Ambigu mime school. Segment 11: ''Don Juan, mimodrame". Marcel Marceau plays Don Juan - without his usual painted face and clown outfit. Segment 12: "Bip For Ever". Bip's walk is over. He turns his back and moonwalks to where he belongs, poetry.