On nesting

Abstract

Writer Julietta Singh talks to filmmaker Chase Joynt about their unfolding collaborative work on a feature-length hybrid documentary, The Nest. Taking a majestic home in central Canada as its focus, the documentary looks to architecture as a portal through which to tell unexpected histories of Westward expansion, Indigenous uprising, ecopolitical activism, domestic violence, and the racialization of a nation. Mapping the structural, political, and intimate histories of the house, the film engages archival remnants and historical fabulation to illuminate forgotten feminist pasts and tell linked stories of its transhistorical occupants. The project asks: How can built environments reveal subjugated stories of the past? How are we affected by the historical traces that linger in our dwelling places? How are race, gender, class, sexuality, and physical ability embedded in architecture? And how might we ultimately understand ourselves as artifacts of space and place that are making and telling histories otherwise?