The Earth Asleep

HOME is excited to announce the World Premiere of an original live score and feature-length film, The Earth Asleep, directed by Manchester-based visual artist Clara Casian (House on the Borderland) and composer Robin Richards (Dutch Uncles). Following their former sold-out collaboration, Birdsong – Stories from Pripyat, for which they visited Ukraine and the Chernobyl exclusion zone to create a unique exploration of impacted memory upon place, the duo have reunited for an equally ambitious and haunting new travelogue. On Friday 11 March 2011, one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded took place 18 miles from the Oshika Peninsula of Japan, triggering a massive tsunami that killed over ten thousand people. Casian and Richards travelled to the village of Otsuchi in remote North-East Japan to document and observe the experiences of local residents. The Earth Asleep addresses the ways in which our exposure to extreme live-trauma in the form of rolling news and citizen reportage has resulted in an inability to process grief at a manageable, human scale. As the world attempts to digest similarly unimaginable loss during the Covid-19 pandemic, film, poetry and live music intertwine in this live rhythmic montage, conjuring a pathway by which the human soul might navigate unseen astral dimensions.

World premiere and love score.