Juliet Ellis: A Symphony of Flesh and Bones

Immersive and dreamlike, this new film and installation from artist Juliet Ellis offers a deeply personal meditation on the nature of self
 
Where does the self begin or end? Who are you when your body begins to decline?
 
In this contemplative new film and installation, artist Juliet Ellis deconstructs the relationship between our body, mind and self. A Symphony of Flesh and Bones draws on the artist’s family history to create a profound and hallucinatory work that both probes and provokes universal questions about personas and impermanence.
 
Focusing on the experiences of her father Lloyd, a world champion bodybuilder, and her brother, Anthony, a former cage fighter, Ellis explores how and why we build our bodies as shelters or armour – and how the physical effects of aging impact the different identities we construct.
 
A Symphony of Flesh and Bones is grounded in Ellis’ Buddhist practice. Deeply meditative, the piece comprises of film split across multiple screens, and a stage performance responding to the film’s content. Ellis sits at the centre of this in the flesh as the live element conducting the work, while dreamlike images of Lloyd and Anthony as younger men, their bodies today and their unrealised dreams appear on screen.
Juliet Ellis is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist, theatre maker and filmmaker. She released her first feature film in 2021, Ruby, which won Best Drama at Berlin Independent Film Festival, the Fellini Award at Austin Arthouse Film Festival. In this new production at MIF25, Ellis inhabits multiple bodies – as the director of both the performance and the video material, and as the live activator bringing the space to life.
 
A profound meditation on the nature of identity and the fragility and impermanence of human life, A Symphony of Flesh and Bones invites us to consider our own selfhood, and how we consume and interact with other people’s bodies.