The Unfixing
Synopsis
| Video-loop of excerpts from feature documentary The Unfixing is presented with a backdrop counting the years beyond the artist's lifetime. Burnt forests, her body buried in soil, and her child emerging from water become fragments of memory and dreaming suspended between grief and renewal. Drawing on Betancourt's experience of chronic illness alongside the accelerating climate crisis, the work reflects on the traces we leave for future generations and the futures already shaping the present. The counting years extend beyond a single human life, inviting viewers to consider themselves within a much longer continuum of ecological time. |
Intimate and surreal, my film and multimedia installation work explores the ways humans are entangled with one another and with the living world. I am interested in relationships across scales—between people, plants, landscapes, memory, and time. My practice responds to the cultural separation of humans from nature and a desire to explore the alchemical power of witnessing. Living with chronic illness for twelve years has deepened my relationship with nature and expanded my engagement with loss, vulnerability, and uncertainty. As a result, I find myself increasingly drawn to nonlinear, dreamlike, and surreal forms of expression. In The Unfixing, I created mythical scenes with family members by burying my body in rocks, and dancing with my daughter under water, and animating painted text on objects. In my current project, The Entanglement, I collaborate with people to create archetypal theatrical scenes rooted in their lived experiences. I am drawn to landscapes and spaces that evoke emotional resonance, incorporating their rhythms and temporalities into film editing and creating site-specific video installations that respond to place. Collaboration and community engagement are integral to my practice. Recent projects, including Trees/Plants/People/Time, are developed through collective processes that bring artists, designers, scientists, organizers, and community members together around shared questions of interdependence, care, and ecological belonging. Through dialogue, public events, partnerships, and community ritual, I create opportunities for collective reflection on our relationships with each other and the more-than-human world. Over the course of my career, I have organized and participated in hundreds of screenings, installations, and community gatherings internationally. |
Nicole Betancourt
| Nicole Betancourt is an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker and installation artist whose work explores the relationships that bind people to one another and to the natural world. Rooted in personal experience, her films and installations weave intimate stories with broader ecological and spiritual questions. Over the past three decades, her practice has evolved from broadcast documentaries to documentary installations. Recent projects include The Unfixing—an interconnected body of work spanning a feature documentary, site-specific installations, and workshops—and The Entanglement, an evolving film and installation inspired by mythology and ecology. Her work has been presented on HBO, PBS, The Weather Channel, HuffPost, international television, and exhibited in galleries, festivals, and community spaces internationally. |