For us humans, the flow and flush of waters sustain our own bodies, but also connect them to other bodies, to other worlds beyond our human selves. Indeed, bodies of water undo the idea that bodies are necessarily or only human.¹

The lighthouse guard exists in perfect symbiosis with their tower and rhythm. When the light disappears and the guard’s destiny is disrupted, it embarks on a journey through barren, abstract-looking landscapes towards populated tourist spots - undetected, as if completely invisible to the human eye. In between the mysterious threshold between dry and watery surfaces, the ancient story of the separation between water and land is told. 

As part of the Winterfilm School 2022 (by Charlotte Eifler and Ludger Pfanz), we decided to interact with the rough landscape of Tenerife using our bodies and a gleaming white cold storage outfit. Near our accommodation in the north of the island, we discovered the Faro de Punta del Hidalgo lighthouse. The white tower, built in 1980 in the course of the big illumination campaign of the Canary Islands, is with 52 meters the highest of the 8 lighthouses of Tenerife. The framing of the island by these coastal towers intrigued us and made us realize how lighthouses mark country borders on maps.

They represent separation — between land and water, between nations and bodies. The rhythm of light in each lighthouse is a form of communication. Each tower has its own signal, its own rhythm, which communicates its position as it shines out to the sea. IGo explores a different function and history of lighthouses and their rhythms. What signals do these architectures actually send, who built them, and what happens when these rhythms are carried from the coast inland? Perhaps they convey a connection between land and water rather than a separation? During our stay, we developed a science fiction story linking lighthouses as misunderstood relics of past humanoids with hydrofeminism to explore how the 'human' and the 'non-human' can permeate each other. 

00:02:34:16 - 00:02:43:15 Water carries memories in form of movement

00:02:49:23 - 00:03:00:08 not only through space, but through time.

00:03:24:22 - 00:03:37:12 A rhythm in the form of a circulating movement.

00:07:25:06 - 00:07:29:04 High towers were built at the threshold of the coasts

00:07:34:04 - 00:07:38:13 radiating the rhythm in form of light.

00:07:46:02 - 00:07:49:14 The translation failed.

00:08:14:05 - 00:08:20:00 The towers became a symbol of separation, watchtowers separating land from water.

00:04:18:21 - 00:04:32:19 At the threshold between dry and watery surfaces the rhythm travels along the coasts.

00:05:05:15 - 00:05:13:23 Not a forward directed movement that strikes dry surfaces

00:05:16:07 - 00:05:25:01 but an unresolved cycle, connecting and keeping in motion.

00:02:00:15 - 00:02:11:06 The ocean remembers how it used to be before. 

Footnotes

1. Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. ↑