At the time, project manager Jane Matthews explained, ‘With the industrialisation and oil-rich economies of our two distinct geographies as the creative catalyst, we hope to inspire new work that will spark and arc across communities and disciplines.’
Texas-based artist Holly Veselka completed her residency and commission in 2022 with The Rig, a 3D animated video exploring the biodiversity of the decommissioned Ninian Northern offshore platform at Dales Voe.
Shetland-based filmmaker Shona Main was originally due to travel to Texas in autumn 2022 for her residency, but a brain injury and resulting neurosurgery prevented her from making the trip. Two years on, with Jane accompanying her to support her access needs, the residency finally took place in November.
Reflecting on her experience, Shona shares how the X-CHANGE residency became a valuable part of her long path of recovery. Prior to her injury, she had focused on closely observed film studies of people and their relationship with the landscape. In 2023, she completed a PhD on the ‘quietly radical ethical practice’ of Shetland filmmaker and teacher Jenny Gilbertson, who travelled widely in the Canadian Arctic in the 1930s and 70s, making pioneering documentary films about the communities and environment. In Texas, Shona found herself adapting her artistic practice, working more with sound than film due to her physical and visual limitations.
Shona visited Mark Menjívar, a San Antonio-based artist and Associate Professor at Texas State University. Like Shona, Mark works with people and the environment to document life, sound and detail. They discussed his work; which is rooted in photography, oral history, archives and social action - in addition to such diverse but profoundly interconnected subjects as bird migration, hunger and death row. The weight of these topics was particularly poignant, as the meeting took place on the day of the 2024 U.S. election result. Shona travelled Texas’s vast landscape, visiting solar farms and oil facilities at Galveston and Corpus Christi. In order to build a sonic picture of the people and infrastructure that make this place so fascinating; she listened, recorded and documented.
Shona was in a strange position in Texas; exploring a physical state of plenty where everything is huge and there is so much of it, everywhere, and yet paying such close attention to the realities of this consumption and production from the perspective of climate change and extraction. This was throwing up more questions than answers…
She explains, ‘The process of listening to the vast refineries at Corpus Christi was a challenge to my immediate sense of repulsion. That bit of time spent with them let me hear something else. I don't know what it is yet but it's intriguing and quite beautiful. If we consider that the climate catastrophe we are now in is a tragedy, what is the song they sing?
‘If we think this is a tragedy, I have no sense the US feel that they are in one. I just see monumental extraction and unrestrained consumption. On the highway, surrounded by huge SUVs and trucks with double wheels, it's relentless. I think of life back home, separating our rubbish into little piles of cardboard and plastic, and it feels futile.’
Yet, with these concerns, she finds hope in the words of writer Rebecca Solnit; ‘The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything, and everything we can save is worth saving.’
Integral to Shona’s residency in San Antonio has been accessibility and rehabilitation. As a filmmaker, explorer and academic, Shona has had to reorder and refocus her practice since the brain injury and subsequent neurosurgery that now affects her mobility, vision and motor skills. Technology provides some incredible solutions… Ray-ban’s Meta glasses with their inbuilt camera and bluetooth connectivity mean that Shona can film hands-free. And she is also listening more intently than ever before, recording a soundtrack to life around her.
The prospect of navigating life away from home was daunting enough, let alone travelling from Shetland to Texas, even with access support. It has been a series of new and often exhausting challenges. However, a huge additional benefit to the time spent in Texas has been the opportunity to focus on gaining physical strength and it was such a bonus to discover the YMCA gym just a couple of blocks away.
Jane reflects on the impact of this aspect of the residency; 'If anyone needs reminding of the wider positive impact a creative opportunity like this can have, then look no further than Shona on the treadmill! I was there to help Shona get around, to drive her to places and to support her whenever and however I could, to enable the residency to progress as originally planned. The additional time we had to connect with the local community at the Davis-Scott Family YMCA was transformational - such a positive part of our trip. Shona built her strength and mobility and went from a shuffle to a stride with our daily visits to the gym. The idea that an outcome from this whole project might be Shona walking stick-free is incredible, and maybe there’ll be an audio-work to prove it…’
