ÖS: I recently watched These Blazeing Starrs! and it reminded very much of Last Things, especially through the way in which you address phenomenons that happen on both microcosmic and macrocosmic scales. I think this association between micro and macro scales can also be traced in your films that more politically and socially motivated.

DS: Unlike Last Things, there's no voiceover in These Blazeing Starrs!, only a poem by Du Bartas at the very beginning. There are some texts embedded in the broadsides of the notices that were put up in public, but they're minimal. Yet it's true that there's a communal mix of metaphysical, poetic aspects to them. In celestial terms, when something completely outside of the ordinary, like a comet, happens, it makes sense to me that people would look to that as a kind of oracular message. I was amazed that in ancient times, people would let the augury or the message of the comet be a kind of predictive measure about what might happen in the future. Usually, it was related to dark things—that their lands would burn, a war would break out, or untold misfortunes would come upon them. Sometimes they were seen as a sign of good fortune too. Even today, comets are still sought as something that could give us answers. The reason we send up satellites and missiles to smash into comets is to break them apart and read their spectral signatures. We're still studying them so that they tell us something we don't know yet. The trajectory seems very clear—how we observe something to find answers about life here on Earth. But the method of inquiry is very vivid. In that way, Last Things also juxtaposes metaphysical, supernatural, or science-fictional storytelling with scientific ones. I think it's worth considering why we trust one mode of storytelling more than the other or why we give more authority to one over the other. Sometimes, when we use them side by side, as an audience member, you know which one you gravitate towards more or which one you find more magnetic. Not just these two, a film like The Illinois Parables also questions the delivery mechanisms of information. Whether or not the audience actually does that, I don't know, but it's part of what gets me to put the film together. 

ÖS: Returning to our discussion on Last Things, I'm curious about your thoughts on the paradoxical nature of the post-human aesthetic associated with the film. Despite efforts to integrate the non-human realm into cinema, the medium, like any art form, remains a product of the human psyche. I believe that even a film attempting to explore rocks, animals, or minerals would ultimately end up being about us and our position in the universe.

DS: I think it's quite true. I mean, I can't step out of my own perspective. At the beginning, there was a line in Last Things' synopsis that went like "It's 4.5 billion years of history from the point of view of rocks." Maybe it sounded good, but it's actually just my speculation about their point of view, and it's hubris to say I can present the perspective of rocks. So I stopped saying that. What I think is more accurate to say is that minerals or rocks essentially serve as a prism or a frame through which I ask questions. Some of the subject matter in the film is indeed related to the post-human, as the film starts more or less with humanity being destroyed. Speculatively, it is about trying to think outside of our species, but I can only ever do it from a place deeply rooted in species. 

On both micro and macro levels, there are various forms of remote sensing, extending beyond what we can naturally perceive—whether in terms of scale, such as volume, or time. There are so many realities out there that we don't have the right sensory doors to pick up on. So the question arises: what does it mean to rely on the crutch of a microscope or a telescope, and for geologists, to see through the lens of rocks, in order to comprehend a kind of deep time? I think we've always wanted to use tools to perceive things that are either too fine-grained or too large-scale for our bodies to grasp. Cinema is just another tool for this purpose, sharing many similarities with telescopes or microscopes, almost like a sister to them. I don't know, I can't find a less esoteric way to explain!

ÖS: Many of your films take American society as a framework. Although concepts like freedom, surveillance, control, freedom and beliefs have universal dimensions, you usually approach them from American perspective. Do you see the U.S. as a comfort zone? If so, how does it feel to work outside that zone?

DS: There are a few films I made outside the U.S., Kings of the Sky (2004) was in China, From Hetty to Nancy (1997) in Iceland, and now the one I'm working on takes place in Ethiopia. There have been exceptions where I've tried to explore political or social landscapes outside of the U.S. But honestly, the U.S. also feels foreign to me. The Illinois Parables and In Order Not to Be Here are the ones with which I tried to explore a place I knew very well. Like any place you know well, sometimes you feel more comfortable being critical of that place, or asking sharp questions about it. But I think in both cases, it could have been any state in the U.S. Just like in The Illinois Parables, you would have found similar stories about exodus and depression in other places. As with In Order Not to Be Here, you could have gone anywhere and find stories about how space regulates us; how fear or the desire for safety can cast others as villains and affect the physical landscapes of where we live. America has an endless supply of problems and critiques to be made of it. I feel responsible for acknowledging the shortcomings of the place I'm from, but the comfort I feel there also helps me to lodge those complaints or critiques.

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ÖS: If you were to revisit the places and people featured in O'er the Land and The Illinois Parables, do you believe you would observe changes in their interactions with the social and political landscape, primarily due to the influence of new media and information technologies?

DS: I suppose I would. I also think that, in terms of the general proclivities of how Americans think about freedom or outsiders, of which there's no shortage, we're a nation completely built on the idea of manifest destiny as well as this colonialist, expansionist desire to come in and claim everything as ours and then look with suspicion at everyone else who comes from outside. I don't think the fundamental tropes of Americana have changed. But I don't really know the answer of this question—whether the people I meet would speak in a really different way or if I would just start hearing some of the same things. Maybe time always changes us and with new tools, people tell stories in new ways. If I was going to try to respond in VR let's say, it would surely be very different.

ÖS: Speaking of which, would you consider working with new media technologies such as VR , AR or AI? 

DS: Possibly! It's about finding a language that feels endemic to the problem you have. It's the reason why a lot of the work I do, such as public sculptures, drawings or sounds are outside of cinema. Cinema would allow me to approach those problems, but it didn't give me the most organic set of ways to do it. It's intuitive, I suppose. For instance, when does something want to become a sculpture? I think public sculptures are related to VR in the sense that you pilgrimage into a space, you're able to move around it, You're not delivered an art form that you're asked to watch from beginning to end. But at the same time, I don't think cinema is linear either. You sit down and you watch the beginning to the end, but the way your mind interacts with it is totally not linear. Yet again there's an implicit contract which, when you go to cinema, makes you give up your sense of time for the artist's sculpture of time—you let It wash over you. Whereas with public sculptures or works in the museum, you, the visitor, sculpt your own time there. The work you're looking at controls you a bit but you have freedom to wander or to stay. I suppose a VR experience would be similar. The themes, problems or promises that come along with VR or AI feel so big that, I don't have anything in my mind that would make sense, but it could be interesting to try. 

ÖS: Before you leave, I'd really love to hear more about your next project, the one you're making in Ethiopia.

DS: I don't quite know what it's about yet. Because I'm still in the middle of making it and it's been in development for a really long time and keeps having to go on hold because of civil war, COVID, and other logistical problems. There were two things that really intrigued me. Firstly, Ethiopia is on a triple junction, where three continental plates are all spreading apart. So to me, that means it's like an earth birthing zone—a kind of a feminist landscape. Secondly, they had a griot tradition that is called Azmari, who comments on and critiques contemporary political issues. In Ethiopia, traditionally the Azmari were often women. This cultural and traditional position of women who had the authority and the agency to criticize power was very interesting to me. Then I started to wonder how women in Ethiopia today are rewriting or critiquing the history. 

The film is called 'Hello Ladies,' and it's like a collective portrait of a group of women. However, the process has been very slow. Speaking of which, these are all very hypothetical because the language I had around the film is going to be very different from what the film actually is. Because the film always has to teach me what it is. So the words I'm saying now are related to what's got me there and may be completely unrelated to what the film is in the end.