The Hide was my magical portal…..Laura Litten, July 2025

The Hide was my magic portal to an experience of an uninterrupted, timeless swim into the process of working in my medium (video). Back in my home studio in urban America, I had felt trapped, as if my primordial brain hadn’t come online yet. At the Hide, everything connected.

I had come intending to work with the rhythms of the natural space, the land, foreign to me but exciting in the potential surprises on offer.  But landscape is a deeply personal experience.  In this ancient, but well-tended rural environment, I was enfolded by sound; the leaves rustling, the cooing of ring-necked doves; rabbits in the grass…. For me, however, it is very tricky to shoot in a beautiful place, rather than somewhere more industrial or burnt out: the abundant beauty when seen in video,  has all the nuance or affect of a postcard.  There is no freight to my footage….

And thus I had to work my way into the work itself. During my residency, my thinking quieted so that ideas flocked in, unarticulated, but visually whole.  The long days of summer light provided me with the option of waking up at 4 am and starting work as the dawn arose–or sleeping intermittently and working late into the night.

And the best part was Alice herself—invisible for much of the time, providing the sense of uninterrupted working time and space, yet available when needed.  

Her critique of my work was invaluable. Alice intuitively saw right to the heart of my practice, with a shared vocabulary and art historical depth.

She introduced me to the Idea of deeply “listening” to the work.

 She pinpointed the exact moments where the film needed tightening up -encouraging my use of filmic space and the continuity between current and past projects in different media.  She wisely pointed out my own artistic pitfalls and advised: “be careful of over complicating things—strip back—sometimes deceptively simple is the outcome…”

She introduced interesting options for approaching this time with my work:  could it be a research tool? Just for experimentation?  Think back to Melies, and early experimental films….So helpful, for the work at the Hide, and deep thoughts to take with me.

On a practical level, the studio space was perfect- a large open area with pitched ceiling; a wall of movable glass paned doors, two sky lights, plenty of hot water and a deep sink for buckets.  Doors opened out to a garden space with chairs and a table with view of the colorful garden at the top of a little apple orchard.  Over a hedge a walking path…. 

A charming shop with most basic supplies, and an attached little café for a cappuccino and croissant—or light lunch-- was about a 10-minute walk. A visit there for a daily coffee quickly became part of my morning routine.

Here I’m sharing a few still photos taken from the film I made while working at The Hide.  I used my own body as a tool for exploring the powerful experience of changing time by slowing down the passage of time so that viewers become keenly aware of their own physical presence and thoughts. I was exploring a way of using video, with its illusion of a perpetual present tense, to investigate the ongoing experience of my mutable body;  the experience of growing older, a rich and unruly source of inquiry.

You can find out more about Laura’s work here: https://www.lauralittenstudio.com/