Phoebe McBride, ‘On Becoming a Water Bat’ | Online Commission Screening

We are happy to present ​‘On Becoming a Water Bat: echoes of an unseen world’ (2023), a new online commission by Phoebe McBride.

This screening will be accompanied by an online discussion with the artist on Thursday, 20 April at 7pm. Book your place here.

Through an imagined transformation into a Daubenton’s bat, ​‘On Becoming a Water Bat: echoes of an unseen world’ journeys through rituals of loss and healing to explore how we can find ways to be with grief and crisis.

The bat is one of many species that, due to the climate crisis, has been forced into evolution at an unnatural pace. The film looks at this shift as a metaphor for premature evolutions through loss- be that personal, or collective – from the pandemic and climate crisis. Set to the backdrop of Aberdeen’s River Dee and visited throughout by the sound of echolocation calls, the work holds an invitation to converse in unknown languages and to bathe in murky waters.

‘On Becoming a Water Bat: echoes of an unseen world’ (2023) was commissioned as part of LUX Scotland’s Aberdeen programme and was supported by Aberdeen City Council.

Image description: A film still of submerged vegetation coloured green, yellow and brown seen through water at night. The background of the image is coloured black. In the centre of the image is text ​‘vesper’ coloured white.