Mother's Tankstation exhibits Maeve Brennan's Listening in the Dark, commissioned for the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2018.
The film takes a documentary approach, gathering a series of subtle but penetrating soundings of human beings’ impact on the natural environment. Its focus is a creature that has often fallen beneath our radar: the bat. Undisturbed, and largely unchanged for millions of years, the bat's nocturnal rhythms are being increasingly interrupted by the presence of wind turbines. While noting how such well-intentioned technological developments are affecting the atmosphere in ways we do not always appreciate, Brennan also illuminates how scientific research has revealed a whole sensory dimension that we were previously oblivious to. There is a growing awareness of the ecological damage humans are causing, yet, as Listening in the Dark notes, we can also be strangely blind to things that happen outside of our consciousness.
