Grounds of Coherence #1, but this is the language we met in

Protests in regional Mandarin, words for a story in Arabic, and a couple telling myth felt in English; what is heard, and what is then given meaning in these connectedness of migratory and loving nature. The wide-ranging imagery and multifaceted soundscape are permeated with the artist’s deep yearning to unearth language in its most primal and embodied forms, revealing both the persistence and fragility of communication across geographies and the essential, if imperfect, role of translation as an act of connection. Shen uses the tree in particular as an embodied metaphor for these “ecosystems of language”. Images of bark, branches, burning logs, and wooden walls appear throughout the short film, showing how language, like a tree, grows, changes, and holds memory.