[ The Ferrovores ]

"this time, this place... beyond open circulation closed reciprocity... closed hydration spheres wrought cast smithed... this is what we are what we eat ... "

Iron is the most common metal on earth. Indeed, it forms much of the molten core of the planet which in turn generates the earth’s magnetic poles. The red soils of the world are due to iron. At a biochemical level, iron is essential for human life, amongst other things, making our blood red. In the societal domain, iron is essential for manufacturing, electricity generation, and much more. Certain bacteria can derive energy for life directly from dissolved iron compounds (“rust”) rather than from oxygen as we do. Perhaps, at some time in the future, we, our descendants, the Ferrovores, may need to do the same.

Yet the Ferrovores are a product of digital code: generational, mutating, synthesising. Even so, the environment collapses around them, as they mine the language of pre-industrial times for reassurance and comfort, dreaming of the days when manufacturing really was handicraft and shared skills.

Filmed mostly in the Southern Flinders Ranges, South Australia, in the midst of a multi-year drought.

• official selection and winner Best Australian Short Experimental, Newcastle International Short Film Festival (Newcastle, Australia, December, 2021);

•  curated screening, The Climate Change Memorial Film Collection, Alphabet Art Centre, The New Museum of Networked Art (Los Angeles, February - April, 2022);

• official selection, Uninhabited International Film Festival (Copenhagen, 2022);

• extended text version illustrated with framegrabs, as Ferrovores – the iron eaters in Antennae – the journal of nature in visual culture 59: microbial ecologies (December, 2022);

• published with text as Ferrovores – Homo ferrovorus (incertae sedis) in Becoming Feral (Glasgow, 2021);

• screened at GlobalConscience.World – Climate Change Music Video Promotion (USA, October, 2021);

• official selection, Carmarthen Bay Film Festival (Wales, May, 2021);

• official selection, 9th International Video Poetry Festival (Athens, May 2021);

• semi-finalist, Dumbo Film Festival (New York, February, 2021);

• featured on ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Facebook page (Berlin, September, 2020);

• official selection, 10th Pune Short Film Festival (India, December, 2020);

• official selection, Monthly Indie Shorts (USA, December, 2020);

• selected for Moving Poems (USA, September, 2020);

• published in The Atticus Review (USA, July, 2020).