Ross Little
The Heavy of Your Body Parts and the Cool Air of the Air Condition (2017)
This film was available until Wednesday 22 April 2020.
In this unique moment of upheaval and change we believe now more than ever it is important to fulfil our mission to bring people together to look at, think about and create contemporary art. Over the next four weeks we’ll be screening a series of films commissioned by Collective, each grounded in artists building works of mutual interest between themselves and participants, and in unpicking the tangled forces that shape our lives today. Some have been produced by artists working directly with groups to explore what can be achieved collectively, while others explore how people have organised in the near past.
Online Discussion
Each film will be available free here on our website for 7 days, at the end of which we will host an informal online discussion on Zoom, framed by a few prompts we’ll share in advance. This is a chance to come together, talk about the films, and discuss how they relate to our current situation.
The Heavy of Your Body Parts and the Cool Air of the Air Condition
Filmed between a cruise ship carrying ‘digital nomad’ passengers and the ship breaking yards in Alang, India The Heavy of Your Body Parts and the Cool Air of the Air Condition (2017) traces different forms of globalised labour. Ross filmed on a cruise ship, contrasting experiences of the employees working long shifts and ‘digital nomad’ passengers, combining luxury travel with online work. In the ship breaking yards, raw footage documents the decommissioning of a cargo ship and the subsequent journey of the scrap material.
Though differing vastly in many respects, notably in their ability to freely speak and represent themselves, all workers in the film share a common status as economic migrants within globalised industries.
Read more about the making of the film and the jellyfish which featured alongside it at the original exhibition at Collective in 2017 in Timothea Armour's interview and essay, originally published in Jackalope magazine, here
Ross Little is a painter and film maker based in Glasgow. He graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2011. Recent projects include; 'On General Antagonism', Frontera 115, Mexico City; performance at Counterflows Festival 2016; and '1957 Chevy Apparition' at Market Gallery, Glasgow for which he presented films made in Cuba with Florrie James.