In Billions of Years, the Sun Will Swallow the Earth

A literature-visual installation exploring the themes of parenthood and childhood between the tumultuous years of 2016-2020.

A very slow animated GIF; each frame is visible for about ten seconds. Bethnal Green Churchyard in Winter. A whippet is meandering back and forth across a snowy path; it pauses midway to seemingly glance at the camera, then vanishes out of sight.

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, exploring our sense of time and space.

Locked down in the summer of 2020, the author Jarred McGinnis reflects on his experiences as a male primary-carer and a disabled parent. His thoughts return to his daughter’s birth in 2016. Moving from their time in Mexico after she was born, through their hour of exercise spent together in a Bethnal Green churchyard, and imagining their lives as she grows up. It is a work that is equally moving and funny but also barbed with the truths of being a father during the strange and tumultuous years of 2016 – 2020.

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.

MADE POSSIBLE WITH SUPPORT FROM