BIRD OF PREY

La Datcha is pleased to present Ella Tetrault's video "Bird of Prey" on Saturday, May 4th, 2019 @ 7pm

"Bird of Prey" is a twenty minute film by artist Ella Tetrault, filmed and co-produced by Molly Willows. The film follows Sam Etemadi, a falconer and naturalist living on the North Mountain of the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia. The work focuses on learning about the Kazakhstani approach to falconry, both practically and emotionally. Through performance and documentary, Tetrault conducted interviews with Etemadi on the relationship a falconer has with a bird of prey, and the possibility for over-identification and projection onto the bird. The dialogue was loosely based on Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk. In her memoir, she attempts to grieve the death of her father by training a Goshawk. She writes, “The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.”

Ella Tetrault (*1983) is a Canadian artist. She holds an MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from the Bauhaus University (2011-2013) and a BA in International Development from the University of Toronto (2003-2008). She is co-founder of the Fuller Terrace Lecture Series. Tetrault is currently a PhD. candidate in the Department of Visual Art at York University, and a sessional instructor at the University of Cologne in the Institute for Art and Art Theory alongside Stefanie Busch. In 2017, she co-edited her first book with Konstanze Schütze, Alain Bieber and the NRW Forum titled "Pizza is God".