A mythic-ecological film in development, tracing a northern fairytale of kinship, extinction, and return.
This new film, currently in its early stages of development, continues Human Clay’s inquiry into myth, ecology, and transformation.
Set within the northern and Arctic landscapes, it unfolds as a contemporary fairytale, a poetic journey through snow, stars, and animal memory, where human and more-than-human worlds converge.
A young being embarks on a quest to find her wolf mother.
Along the way she is swallowed by the Arctic snow moth, descending into the realm of seven moons where she encounters four mythical beings who guard the constellations of lost voices.
Through these encounters she begins to listen to the languages of wind, fur, water, and ice; learning how to restore life to the beings of the Earth silenced by two centuries of extraction and ecological amnesia.
Vision and Context
The project arises from a longing to decenter human narratives and to rediscover story as ecological knowledge.
It asks: What if myth could become a method of repair?
The film draws upon traditional ecological knowledge, Arctic mythologies, and shamanic poetics, where wolves, snowmelt flowers, and unseen guardians act as messengers of continuity between worlds.
Through imagery and sound, the film explores the psychoacoustic properties of landscape: how snow, wind, and animal breath hold memory; how yoiking, the Sámi art of singing one’s relationship to beings and places, embodies an ancient technology of kinship.
It envisions the North as a living cosmology, a field of luminous interdependence where stars, ice, and breath converse, a constellation of amulets, ice growths, and treasures arising from the memory of matter.
Methodology and Approach
The film combines ritual performance, movement, and sonic research with experimental cinematic forms.
It unfolds through fieldwork, listening, and mythic re-composition in northern territories, weaving documentary traces, dream imagery, and ecological soundscapes.
Core creative methods include:
Mythopoetic Script Development – drawing from northern cosmologies, fairytales, and oral histories to create a script that functions as a ritual journey.
Embodied Fieldwork – site-responsive movement and listening practices in Arctic or sub-Arctic environments, working with the presence of snow, ice, and animal traces.
Sound as Invocation – collecting layers of environmental and animal sounds, exploring their psychoacoustic qualities and vibrational storytelling capacities. Creation of sculptural, body-responsive instruments
Collaboration with Indigenous and Ecological Knowledge-Holders – engaging artists, musicians, and researchers connected to northern cultures, conservation projects, and rewilding initiatives.
Film as Ceremony – shaping a visual and sonic language that treats cinema as offering — a gesture of reconciliation between human and more-than-human life.
Thematic Terrain
Animal Kinship and Rewilding – honouring wolves, reindeer, and other northern species as carriers of ancestral intelligence and ecological balance.
Extinction and Renewal – addressing ecoside through the reanimation of silenced life forms and mythic beings.
Communication Across Worlds – exploring how humans may re-learn the faculty of listening to the languages of other beings.
Assimilation into Place – the human protagonist becomes absorbed by the Arctic’s living fabric, dissolving into the field of place.
Constellations and Memory – stars, snow particles, and ice formations act as mnemonic maps guiding the journey through time and loss.
Aims
To create a mythic-ecological fairytale that reimagines human relationship with the Arctic world.
To collaborate with northern and Arctic communities, artists, and researchers to develop a shared language between myth, ecology, and conservation.
To integrate artistic and environmental research, linking cinema with animal conservation, rewilding projects, and nature study centres.
To develop new sound and film methodologies for expressing the voices of the seldom-sensed presences of the Earth.
Current Stage and Strategic Development
More on Residency and partnership development link
The film is at its conceptual and research stage.
In the next two years, Human Clay CIC aims to:
Establish partnerships with institutions and artists across the Nordic and Arctic regions — including centres for wildlife research, indigenous culture, and environmental arts.
We are seeking development funding and residencies from organisations such as:
Nordic Culture Point / Nordic Culture Fund
Arts Council England International Collaboration Fund
Creative Europe
The Finnish Cultural Foundation
The Prince Claus Fund (environmental and cultural resilience)
and wildlife conservation trusts supporting film and arts initiatives.
Engaging with animal conservation and rewilding projects (animal conservation : ringed seal, polar bear, snowy owel, arctic fox, raindeer, wolf; Arctic flora restoration).
Begin exploratory sound and movement residencies
Artistic and Cultural Contribution
The film positions myth and fairytale as technologies of perception, ways of reawakening relational imagination.
It contributes to the emerging field of eco-mythological cinema, where storytelling becomes a means of listening and repair. By integrating indigenous song traditions (yoik) and the psychoacoustics of Arctic environments, the film creates a sonic landscape that breathes a listening field.
Through this, we open to the silent continuities between beings, elements, and human longing.
The work expands Human Clay’s vision of art as ecological offering, carrying its southern, earth-rooted sensibilities into the crystalline north, a gesture of kinship with the polar and animal worlds.
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The project is positioned as both an artistic fairytale and an ecological invocation, extending Human Clay CIC’s practice into dialogue with Arctic mythologies, conservation networks, and the rewilding of human perception.
Developing Northern / Arctic institutional connections:
Nordic Culture Point, Arctic Arts Summit, Sámi Centre for Contemporary Art, Finnish BioArt Society, Icelandic Art Centre, Norwegian Polar Institute, Arctic Circle Residency (Svalbard), Nordic House Reykjavik
Developing Environmental and conservation partnerships:
Rewilding Europe, WWF Arctic Programme, Snowchange Cooperative (Finland), Polar Research Institutes, Wildlife Trusts supporting Arctic species recovery.
Potential funders and collaborators:
Nordic Culture Fund, Arts Council England International, Creative Europe MEDIA, Goethe-Institut Climate Culture Fund, and Prince Claus Fund.