Soil, Chapter One — Video Essay (2025)

Soil, Chapter One is a slow, careful look at the ground beneath our feet — not as dirt, but as a living archive.

Shot over multiple seasons in rural landscapes, this experimental video essay weaves together personal memory, conversations with artists and researchers, and the  everyday rituals of those who work the land. The soil here is not a backdrop. It is a character, a document, a collaborator.

Moving between intimate close-ups of crumbling earth, hands sorting seeds, and wide shots of fields under changing light, the film asks: What does it mean to inherit a landscape? How does resistance live in the ground — in the way a plant is saved, a seed is shared, a field is left to rest?

This is field-based work, a first chapter in a larger inquiry. It treats soil as a method: a way of looking, of listening, of remembering.

—

Filmed across rural landscapes of Komi Republik, 2024.

Research interviews, voiceover, and field recordings by Nika Grigorian.