Stop-motion pixilation animated video
Site, place, collecting, animation, land, gathering, family, extraction
August-November 2022

What does this harvesting of fishing refuse do when examined on site in playful ways?

Traps on Ironbound is a loopable, animated exploration of bits of disintegrating lobster traps in their found habitat – marine detritus washed up on the shores of West Ironbound Island in Mi’kma’ki. As a descendant of North Atlantic fishery workers who would have placed many of these traps into the waters surrounding this coastal peninsula, I complete a cycle started by my forebears, collecting one by one the now fragmented and disintegrating bits of fishery equipment my relatives and their contemporaries had placed into the ocean. In this way, this piece is collaborative across generations, working as a site of gentle and almost meditative reflection. The style of lobster trap depicted in this piece is no longer used by the lobster industry, meaning that these scraps (tempered by saltwater and brought, by chance and tides, currents and rust, to the shores of Ironbound) have become archival traces of a different time. Pieces of the traps were gathered from beaches on the island over the course of a week, while percussive sounds of materials on the island were recorded to provide a score rooted in site. Displayed one by one on the same rocks and seaweed that they become caught up in, these images of trap debris are put through an examination of materiality, contemplating extractive processes, ecological impacts, and ancestral responsibility.