The video of ‘Water,logged’ can be streamed on YouTube (click CC for captions). A visual description of the film-story is available below, as audio and text.

Audio (click player):

Text:

“Water,logged” is a film-story, which means it’s a film and a story. Both, and not quite either.

While I’m reading the voice-over, many images play onscreen. There aren’t enough pauses or moments of silence to properly audio-describe the images, so instead I offer visual descriptions here.

The film-story opens with an abstract close-up shot of still, blue canal water, reflecting a few leafy trees and a sky with puffy white clouds. As the sound of rain in a forest begins, the title “Water,” “comma”, “logged” appears on the screen in white letters, following by “a film-story by Sandra Alland”. Then, a quote from Tania Kovats: “To hold the self is as hard as holding liquid in your hands.”

A bird flies across the reflected sky. As I begin to tell the story, ripples appear in the water, getting smaller and moving away from the camera. As the sound of rain starts, something small hits the water, but we don’t know what. The ripples echo outwards in a second collection of waves.

Next is a white metal staircase over reflective black water, filmed from above, perhaps by someone who can’t go down the stairs. When I say the word ‘feelings’, we cut briefly to my white hands. They’re in grey support gloves, holding a copper set of dousing rods, used to find water or spirits, in front of green foliage and a dead brown leaf.

As the film progresses, it becomes clear the outdoor staircase is part of a Victorian-era water treatment works. There are scenes of still reservoirs and water rushing over bricks, all behind fences and padlocks in a rainy Scottish landscape. Then a lush green marsh. A beer tin floating beautifully in a canal with flowering and browning autumnal plants. Close-ups on spider webs with droplets of water, moving from fuzzy to crystal clear.

When the sound of rain stops, the images begin to change more quickly. They move in time with my voice as I rhythmically list many kinds of water imagined by the story’s characters, who are referred to as ‘Pussy Riot’ throughout the story. There are locks with cascading water, my hands under a silver tap, a wheelchair-user moving their chair with difficulty out of a leaf-strewn puddle, an environmental checkpoint sign, a tap gushing in a silver sink, boats in a marina near a lock system, abstract patterns of overgrown bright green and white algae on still water, and a sign that says No Swimming. Finally, the camera follows an open marine lock with falling water out into a wide, dark river.

After a pause and blackness, the rain sound returns and the images again change more slowly. We are outside. The camera moves along a black metal bench that is surrounded by a deep and reflective clear rain puddle. The ground is made of large, orangey pebbles, and there’s a discarded piece of plastic on the bench, perhaps from a four-pack of beer. We cut to my booted feet from above, as I sit on this bench with my worn, black boots half-covered in water. The wind moves the bottoms of my trousers. Next are several jump cuts of my hands holding the dousing rods in front of fuzzy images of bright green foliage. The rods move in circles and sway back and forth. The video is edited so that the images ‘jump’ or glitch, because some of the natural elapsed time has been removed. I release the dousing rods in frustration or pain.

The image changes to the sea and a coastal beach on a bright day. The camera moves backwards from the water of the firth, as if we are walking/rolling backwards with it. It shows an overgrown and inaccessible grassy sand path. Moving back again, the camera reveals the back of a wheelchair-user who clearly cannot get to the beach. The next image is a close-up down at beach level, facing out to sea. Waves approach and recede. In the background, a mountainous island and a cloud-studded blue sky. In the foreground, a large algal bloom of puffy white foam dances in and out on the sun-dappled waters of the firth.

Next is a slow-moving tidal puddle, full of flat white foam, with glimpses of sand bars and seaweed through the clear areas of water. The camera moves slowly too, but against the flow of the water, following it out towards the sea as it flows in. We cut to seven decaying wooden posts sticking vertically out of a dark river, with green and white moss growing on their sides and tops. Of varying heights, the posts are reflected in the rippling grey-black water. We move to a glitchy, repeating shot of rain hitting a grey metal rooftop, with a blue cloudy sky in the distance. Then my gloved hands dousing again.

A fuzzy white image becomes a close-up of my bare hands covered in white foamy soap and bubbles, slowly moving together. Then the running tap again, so close that the camera captures water molecules of spray coming off the main stream of water. Finally, a close-up on a clear plastic jug with a white plastic filtration system inside it, sitting on a kitchen counter. There’s condensation on the jug, and water runs slowly through the filter.

As the credits play, the water moves through the jug, showing a decreasing line of water at the top section of the jug, and an increasing line at the bottom. There are mesmerising patterns and movements of the water.

Credits:

Story, voice, camera, editing, hands: Sandra Alland
Assistant direction, performance: Matson Lawrence
Captions: A.B. Silvera
Filmed in autumn 2020 at: Forth and Clyde Canal, Milngavie Water Treatment Works, Bowling Harbour and Beach, Ayr and Prestwick Beaches, Glasgow Western Necropolis, and a flat in Dennistoun.

More info:

“Water,logged” is part of Anything Not Measurable Is Not Real (Proper Tales Press, 2019) and was first published in Gutter. It is a work of fiction and the author does not claim to represent the artists.

Read more information on Measurable, including the audiobook and other film-stories.

Sandra acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts via a Digital Originals Grant 2020.