Close to the sea there is an impromptu pet cemetery. The locals are not sure about how it started, but the way it populates the landscape suggests that a grieving pet owner built a grave for their pet in that place and others followed their lead. Due to its improvised nature there is no grid being followed by the graves. Walking through it, one must be careful not to step on the resting place of a deceased animal. But the floor planning is not the only thing being improvised, the graves themselves are adorned with the most varied assortment of things. There are the expected crosses on a cemetery of a christian country, but most of the graves seem to be decorated in a way specific to the animal being mourned. Some have pictures of the pet surrounded by fake flowers or succulents, others have toys, rocks delineating the area of the grave, small trinkets or discarded construction materials like tiles or bricks.
This place was built following the intuition of humans informed by the relationship they lived with a non-human animal, rather than a set of cultural practices. We get the sense that this bond existed. Grief is materialized through a creative practice in a ritualistic process of setting in nature an hybridized relation between beings.
I left your bones in the sun my love premiered during the experimental video festival VideoClub-DIY in Silent Green Kulturquartier, Berlin.
I left your bones in the sun my love | short film | 2023