THE COUNTRY DWELLERS

Immersive Video Installation

2023-Current

The Country Dwellers is an immersive video installation that traces the connections between Appalachian folk magic in the southeastern United States from the 1800s to the 1980s. The title of the work derives from the Latin root of the word pagan, paganus, meaning “rural person” or “country dweller,” a term that gestures toward the deep spiritual relationship these communities maintained with the land and how that connection shaped their sense of self and belonging. The project originates from family stories and photographs documenting traditional folkways practiced by the artist’s ancestors, who settled in the Appalachian Mountains in the mid-nineteenth century. These fragments are expanded into reconstructed memories through the use of archival video and photographic material. Extensive archival research for the film was conducted throughout the Southeast, including research at the Foxfire Institute, Georgia Folklore Archives, Appalachian State University archives, and the Prelinger Film Archive, in addition to the artist’s family archive. 

This multi-channel video installation comprises five interwoven streams of moving images that reflect the layered and often misunderstood lives of Appalachian communities, in particular their spiritual beliefs and practices. The various channels focus on folk practices such as water dowsing, planting by the signs which are decidedly pagan alongside Evangelical worship to illustrate how these practices co-existed in everyday life. What on the surface is seemingly contradictory, existed harmoniously together as part of their collective understanding of the world which freely mixed the mundane and the fantastical.