Amulet

Molly Palmer received a contribution to develop her new film Amulet. The film explores perceptual shifts reached through trauma, bereavement and diagnosed difference. Amulet creates a community that helps detach experiences from shame or stigma and explore the information that is revealed by our encounters with different registers of the real. Amulet responds to Het HEM’s empty bullet factory building, combining movement, sound and sculptural props to imprint new layers of meaning in the space. The film draws on Palmer’s translations of thought models and methodologies in occult and esoteric practice. An amulet is a ritual object made to protect its owner. This object can be made from any material, even a person or building. The film offers a kind of amulet making that aims to reinforce its participants and viewers. If there are aspects of reality that we cannot change, can we invoke their transformation within and between ourselves?

Molly works within and between the media of filmmaking, installation, sculpture and choreography. In her layered video worlds, music, gesture and dialogue form cyclical narratives exploring the strangeness concealed within ordinary things. Her practice is episodic and accumulative, nurturing porous membranes between past, present and future. Its narratives explore the transformative potential of intention and belief. In this process they open a space where difficult experiences bring opportunity for shifts of understanding. With this personal and collective exchange, Molly raises questions about our perception of reality. The visible and invisible - the inner and outer worlds that produce it. In her associative, dreamlike and absurdist realms, Molly explores the complexities and contradictions of being human.