Land/Escapes (film)

A collaboration between J Dellecave, Aviva Jaye, Julia C Liu, and zavé martohardjono

Land/Escapes considers the present-day responsibilities of settlers. Two queer immigrant settlers build, play, melt, and devolve in fantastical lands and amidst crumbling colonial estates. Cycling and stunted, these occupiers of unceded lands ask “Where do we go?”

Premiere at Gathering curated by Sophia Ma and Cecile Chong,  July 8-August 13, 2023, Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.

Distributed by Group Intervention Vidéo

Land/Escapes is a short dance film born from a conversation between J Dellecave and Zavé Martohardjono about the potential of dance to arise from de-colonized sensation, desire, remembering, and story-making. The film aims to reckon with, but not resolve or absolve, the co-choreographers’ immigrant settler bodies’ political history and political responsibilities to collective futures as occupiers of unceded indigenous territory.

Together, the artists considered the not-yet, the liminal nature of their settler positions on still-occupied land, and the fact that the land is not-yet returned to its millions of indigenous stewards. Alongside researching the indigenous history of the Catskills, the artists grappled with their contradictory relationships to the North American lands their ancestors colonized, settled, and immigrated to. 

Conception, performance, writing J Dellecave and and zavé martohardjono

Direction, cinematography, and editing Julia C Liu

Music by Aviva Jaye