Baby Snakes Hatching. Ruins. Ruins.

2012, 16mm film, 16mins 46s, stereo audio

The project Baby Snakes Hatching. Ruins. Ruins. includes a 16mm film, a series of collages and unique silkscreen prints, and an artist book. In the film, three characters perform a ritual based on a collage process in which images of architectural decay are connected to hatching snake eggs.

In Aby Warburg’s “A Lecture on Serpent Ritual” (1923), he writes about magical assimilation with nature in Hopi snake rituals: live snakes are thrown onto sand drawings to provoke lightning, thunder, and rain. Among the Hopi, snakes are iconographically associated with lighting. In the film Baby Snakes Hatching. Ruins. Ruins., this ritual is translated to extend to three characters whose performance enables an apartment to hatch and fall into ruins. The scenes in the apartment are crosscut with tracking shots from the old snake hall at the Naturkunde Museum, Berlin. The east wing of the museum was severely damaged during the Allied bombing of Berlin and was only recently rebuilt to accommodate the reptile collection. 

An artist book was produced, including research material from the project: images found at various archives, such as The Warburg Institute, London, Archiv der Naturkunde Museum, Berlin, and Archiv der Akademie der Kunste, Berlin; and essays by Erlend Hammer and Emily Verla Bovino. 

Click here for link to Artist Book

Baby Snakes Hatching. Ruins. Ruins.  
2012, 16mm film, 16min 46s, stereo audio

Credits:

Direction and Production: Mai Hofstad Gunnes
Cast: Rahel Savoldelli, Fabian Stumm, Helga Wretman
Director of Photography: Anne Misselwitz
Light design: Henning Gebhardt
First Assistant Director: Steinar Haga Kristensen
First Camera Assistant: Rasmus Sievers
Make-up and Hair: Fay Hatzius
Editor: Cristovao dos Reis and Mai Hofstad Gunnes
Composer Sound: Ingar Zach