Floating Market postcard (recto)

Tracing the Natural World is supported by the British Council’s Connections Through Culture programme and brings together Orkney and Vietnam through film, sound, and sensory perception, exploring how place is experienced through everyday life. Developed through a collaboration between Orkney artist Louise Barrington and Vietnamese artist Do Ha Thu, the project creates a dialogue between participants from both regions through filmmaking, postcard exchange, and shared reflections on environment, memory, and daily experience.

In Orkney, participants reflected on the uniqueness of the place and how filmmaking could communicate their relationship to the landscape. Through attention to daily routines, close observation, movement, and sensory engagement, they explored the poetry of the everyday environment and developed a deeper awareness of the world around them.

In Vietnam, participants from Can Tho engaged with similar questions through their own local context, exploring waterways, markets, animals, urban movement, and changing environments through film and visual exchange. Through the film-lab process, Vietnamese participants reflected on how everyday experiences, memories, and sensory observations shape their understanding of nature and environmental change.

Rather than presenting climate change as a singular visible event, the films from both Orkney and Vietnam consider environmental change as gradual, subtle, and at times difficult to perceive. The project creates space for participants in both places to learn how others live, sense, and respond to a changing world.

Join Orkney artist Louise Barrington to learn more about the project at the Pier Arts Centre on Saturday 16 May, 2:30-4:30pm. Admission is Free

Alongside the films, participants from Orkney and Vietnam created postcards reflecting their own experiences of place. These responses ranged from sunrises and local symbols to moments of movement and play, offering personal reflections on home, memory, environment, and connection. The postcards became a way of sharing both differences and common experiences between the two countries, continuing the dialogue between participants across regions and cultures.

Floating Market postcard (verso)

The project forms part of an ongoing exchange, where these observations enter into dialogue with responses from Vietnam.