In Billions of Years, the Sun Will Swallow the Earth
A literature-visual installation exploring the themes of immigration, childhood and of place and time.
Of all the clichés about parenting, no one talks about how easy time travel becomes.”
Teaser Trailer
Film by Ed Prosser
In Billions of Years, the Sun Will Swallow the Earth
A collaboration with the photographer Andy Sewell and producer Ed Prosser.
While the audience watches the ‘near-repetition’ of imagery of a churchyard taken over the four seasons of a year, the author Jarred McGinnis reflects on his experiences as an immigrant, a male primary-carer and a disabled parent. His thoughts return to their time in Mexico after his daughter was born, through their moment at play in a Bethnal Green churchyard, and imagining their lives as she grows up in Marseille, drifting between past, present and future in a deliberately free flowing way, exploring the themes of parenthood/childhood and of place and time. It is a work that is equally moving and funny but also barbed with the truths of being a man determined to be a different kind of father than he has known.
One of the triptychs (winter)
by Andy Sewell
One of the triptychs (early spring)
by Andy Sewell
Audio reading of the text
Sound Design by Ed Prosser
Images at the installation at Saint Matthew's Bethnal Green
We needed to have a few practice runs to get the technology right and to have a test reading of the text. It made sense to use the church whose yard features in the story.
The text was published by the creative non-fiction journal Hinterland in their Issue 12 – Winter 2022/2023
