By Winnie Wang

In addition to the many screenings, talks, and workshops that might be expected at a film festival, Open City Documentary Festival hosted a ‘lecture performance’ by artist-filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland. Taking the form of a multimedia presentation, and appended with an expert panel of speakers, ‘Eyes that Shine at Night’ elaborated on research Rinland conducted for her exhibition ‘Extramission: The Capture of Glowing Eyes’, which ran at San Sebastián’s Tabakalera and International Film Festival Rotterdam and will also result in a publication.

In the dark studio of East London’s Rich Mix, Rinland sat behind a table alongside workers from the Natural History Museum: Principal Curator of Mammals, Richard Sabin, and conservators Tanya Nakamoto and Fabiana Portoni. On a screen behind them, Rinland projected the display of her laptop. On it, a treasure trove opened up: archival scans from National Geographic, audio clips narrating the contents of those pages, infrared footage captured by camera traps placed near burrows, and thermal imaging footage of museum workers handling specimens. Rinland opened media files methodically, overlapping images and videos with live voiceover – she and the speakers reading from scripts. Towards the end, the performance transitioned into an unrehearsed discussion, as Rinland asked her guests about their practices.

Over the course of approximately 35 minutes, the performance examined technologies involved in the conservation and documentation of animals. From night-time flash photography of wildlife in the early 20th century to the handling of dead specimens today, Rinland shifted focus between contexts and the various usages of different cameras that have been employed to produce knowledge. ‘Eyes That Shine at Night’ takes its name from the effect of the tapetum lucidum, a layer of tissue that results in animals’ glowing eyes. Previously cited as evidence of extramission theory in the field of visual perception, which proposed that beams were emitted from eyes onto an object, it is now understood that the reflective layer merely enhances the visible light entering through the retina.

Those who have seen Collective Monologue (2024) or Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another (2019), two of Rinland’s feature films, will appreciate the continuation of a non-narrative format that extends her longstanding interest in the natural world, animals, epistemology, institutions, archives, and labour. During our conversation, she frequently returned to the importance of process: how it informs her artistic practice and determines form, and why she considers it important to engage with her audiences. We also spoke about the role of institutions, the relationship between violence and care, and subverting classification systems through non-visual cues.

Winnie Wang: How did this project originate? I understand that you had an exhibition, ‘Extramissions’, which focused on the work of wildlife photographer George Shiras. Is that where it began?

Jessica Sarah Rinland: This project started in 2019 or 2020, when I was interested in the infrared motion-censored cameras that biologists use to capture camera trap footage, images of animals in the wild. I started doing research into the history of that and became quite fascinated with George Shiras [a pioneer of night-time flash photography]. During the pandemic, I bought a camera trap and installed it in my parents’ back garden. It was part of my daily routine to watch the videos, whether of foxes, badgers, birds, or squirrels. Then I used camera trap footage in Collective Monologue (2024).

In January or February 2024, Tabakalera commissioned me to work on a project. They were initially interested in Collective Monologue and doing something expanded around the film, but I’m not interested in transferring my single-screen cinematic work into a gallery space. I suggested making a new, site-specific work, which is how I was able to do more research on Shiris.

I’ve collaborated with Richard Sabin for many years. I knew that I wanted to do something with the museum and that I wanted to use this specific thermal imaging camera called a ‘pulsar’, which is used for hunting animals at night. I was interested in this and how the technology is similar to that of camera traps, but different. I met the conservators and proposed the idea of filming them conserve four specimens that had been brought from Argentina to the Natural History Museum between the late 1800s to the 1950s – some of them by important people like Perito Moreno [a prominent naturalist and explorer in Argentina].

I tend to work on books when I’m making films or installations. With this project, there will be a book too. I have a residency in September to work on it more. The idea is that I’d like to commission reflections by artists, scientists, biologists, technologists, curators – people who have something to do with these cameras and technologies. In a way, I did the same with Black Pond [2018]. It took me many years to publish The Society [2021], which is the book that goes alongside that film. I did quite a few iterations of a performance called ‘Black Pond: The Society’, which helped me think through the book. It’s a way of thinking through things.

Black Pond (Jessica Sarah Rinland, 2018)

WW: When I was watching the performance, I was amazed by what could happen with a screen, as well as the decision to include the physical presence of the workers from the Natural History Museum. I’m curious about how you decided on this multimedia format with videos, photos, and audio.

JSR: It’s something that I’ve been doing for a while. It has to do with research. What performance lets me do that a film doesn’t is to reveal the process of making. That’s how I like to look at it: inviting the workers who participated in the film, reading texts and showing videos that were part of the project.

WW: Do you plan to stage this again?

JSR: The plan is to do it at Union Docs [in New York] over the summer. It’ll be different because the conservators won’t be there, so everything that they did live will perhaps be pre-recorded.

WW: In live performance, each staging is unique in that there are subtle variations in the delivery of lines, timing, and audience reactions. Do you embrace or look forward to the variations that might arise in each iteration?

JSR: With ‘Eyes that Shine at Night’, it’s part of the research process. I’m sure that if I perform it again in the summer, it will change. There might be new texts or new conversations with people. Maybe I’ll meet other conservators who aren’t directly linked to the project; I might even be in conversation with them during the performance. Because it’s part of the development and the research that I’m doing, it probably will change in other iterations – although it is heavily scripted.

WW: During the performance, you recounted how the first photograph of a beaver chewing down a tree was captured, and how that beaver was too frightened and potentially traumatised by the flash to return that season. There’s a tension between how these photographs provide us with valuable scientific information about animals, and how they can also be disruptive and harmful. What interests you about the ethical challenges embedded in technologies and institutions?

JSR: Violence and care are intertwined. They’re historically intertwined and they’re intertwined now and that’s what I’m interested in discussing with people who work at institutions. They know this is what I’m curious about: this idea of repatriation or reparation; ecological and museological conservation; animals that are alive or dead; objects that are alive or dead. Depending on the culture, people see objects in museums as living things as well. And I think of a zoo as a museum. There isn’t that much of a difference between these spaces. I’m also interested in the relationship between the body of the worker and the body of the institution – the nuances within this binary.

When I approach these projects, I have my own point of view, but I’m incredibly open. I’m not going into these places with a political statement. I’m interested in the nuances of these spaces and what develops from conversations with people who work there.

WW: What I appreciate about your body of work is that your practice feels consistent. When you step back, there are themes that emerge around nature, animals, science, conservation, hands, and tactility. Where does your interest in these subjects come from?

JSR: I don’t see them as subjects, I see them as part of my life. There’s no conscious decision to make a film with animals, or trees, or people who work with these things. It’s just part of our surroundings, even if we’re in cities. We’re part of an ecology. I’m interested in that, and how we fit into this ecosystem.

I’ll talk about the origins of my curiosity in – or you could call it an obsession with – hands and tactility. I’m interested in forms of classification and subverting them within the natural world. Most of our classification systems in the West come from the way that we see things. Animals are classified through their stripes, or the way that their noses look, or the barnacles on their backs. You could talk about how birds and whales might be classified through sound, but touch is never used, smell is never used. I’m interested in broadening our senses by focusing on touch and smell.

It also has a lot to do with labour. I’m filming people working most of the time, and they’re in direct contact with the things that they’re working with, or there as a mediator of a tool. But they’re very manual tasks, so the focus is the hand.

WW: You’ve screened your films at TIFF, Locarno, Jeonju, but also festivals specifically engaging with non-fiction – True/False, CPH:DOX, Cinéma du Réel, Open City… What is your relationship with documentary and nonfiction?

JSR: I’m interested in process. A lot of my practice has to do with process and thinking about what film I want to make. I don’t think about whether it’s going to be documentary or fiction. I think about the people I want to meet, or the spaces I want to visit. Obviously, process then leads to the name of something, whether it’s documentary, non-fiction, or fiction.

Collective Monologue keeps being called an observational documentary, and I don’t fight it. People can say whatever they want to say, but it’s not an observational documentary. There’s so much construction in there. It’s a response to what Maca [the film’s primary animal carer] is doing most of the time, but there was a lot of reenactment.

WW: What would you call it instead?

JSR: A project, because that takes account of process. I wonder if this is a question for programmers or critics, but how much do you think about process when you’re watching something? Q&As are strange things, because they’re normally 15 minutes long, and there are three questions that people usually ask a filmmaker, and they’re quite superficial. The format of the film festival doesn’t lend itself to people thinking about process. That’s something I’m thinking a lot about.

There are some film festivals I love that include locals and make efforts to send emails to institutions or people that are relevant to the films being shown, so that the audience is more than filmmakers watching films. And that has to do with process as well. It’s great to be able to finish something after so much time, to have audiences respond and have conversations with people. In the case of Collective Monologue, I’m privileged in so far as I’m travelling with the film and I get to meet a lot of audiences, but, at the same time, I think about Maca and the four people in the crew who are not able to travel. They don’t get their flights paid for. They don’t get their accommodation paid for. They don’t have the privilege that I have of travelling with the film as much as they would want to.

WW: As an audience member, when I’m in a documentary context, process is more in the foreground.

JSR: There’s perhaps more transparency around labour conditions, whereas in fiction, it might be more opaque. I’ve made films that would be seen more as fictional, but I don’t think of these as that different. I still write a lot [for them]. I’m still reenacting things.

This interview was conducted during Open City Documentary Festival 2025 in the framework of the Critics Workshop with Another Gaze.