3min 30sec, single channel

invited public screening at Electronic Visual Arts 2008 in London

'I woke up in the middle of the night, and saw a brown bear. This is my encounter with a brown bear from Kamchatka in my private space and neighborhood.’

Brown bears are known as solitary walkers in the Kamchatka peninsula, Eastern Russia. They are rulers in the volcanic springs of Kamchatka, but chased by hunters illegally. In 1983, Korean airlines flight KAL 007 disappeared without trace from airspace near Kamchatka. Kamchatka is a debatable or 'lost' land where strangers may be at home, and a place where the wind of change blows.

The "Kamkatcha Blues" film is part of a larger project, 'Strangers in the Neighborhood', which explores glocality (the commingling of the global and local), nomadic identity and strangerhood in the urban community.

(Kamkatcha is spelled wrongly intentionally in the title, and you can notice two different pronunciations in the film.) The recitation within the film asks questions about migration, inclusiveness and the physicality of the built environment as a homeland.


Poem in German