Ayni
Susie Olczak
2024
Single channel moving image 
07 min 35 secs

Ayni was filmed in Chile and across the border at Laguna Colorada in Bolivia in 2023. The title means reciprocity in the Lickan Antay community’s native language Kunza. They have inhabited the Atacama Desert region of Chile for over 10,000 years. This film celebrates their unique way of life. As a nomadic community, they move around the desert with their llama searching for water. The title of this work refers to the name of the ceremony performed when they first arrive at a place to ask Mother Earth for protection and in return, they try to look after the places they reach.  

The Atacama Desert is home to the Alma observatory, the Altiplano, salt lagoons, valleys of ancient cacti and the rainbow-coloured rocks. Despite the beauty of the landscape, it faces some ecological challenges. The region has been used for mining for many years, previously heavy nitrate mining took place, now leaving ghost town like disused mines throughout the desert landscape since it can be created synthetically. Today copper and lithium mining impacts on the natural environment and water availability in a place where it is already so scarce. The problems are not only extractive but also additive. The area is also home to a large pile of disused fast fashion that is so large it can be seen from space. This film considers water in the driest place on Earth, some parts of the Atacama Desert have had no recorded rainfall. Ayni celebrates the way of life in this location despite these challenges and extremes. It is an opportunity to celebrate the beauty of the landscape calling for a more hopeful and resilient future. Olczak’s own rituals are performed within the desert. The slowness of walking becomes a ritual act, marks made in the desert sand which remain for days after and sand slips downwards like sand timers.

 The film highlights human interventions and natural adaptations. The red algae in Laguna Colorado has adapted to be more resilient against the high and low temperatures and UV radiation. Olczak connected with the materials used locally to build simple but necessary shelters, making clay and performing with the vessels used to hold water and by the rocks that are made to try to control the river. Making sculpture using found natural materials cut down in the garden to create forms based on the water dowser, a tool used to find water. The footage shows the vibrancy of the region, the colour within the desert, the oasis of Coyo where Olczak lived with the indigenous community amongst the medicinal plants. Celebrating the irrigation and terracing systems that allowed for life to thrive despite the most difficult of circumstances and crops only being allowed to be watered once every 21 days, life flourishes within the oasis. The Cachiyuyo plant that absorbs the salt from the lagoons and allows for other plants to thrive, the Rica-rica that the llama feed on and the Tamarugo tree with deep root systems to reach the extensive underground water networks and that stop the desertification.

 This work uses layered imagery to consider the deep geological time which holds the layers of history of the region. Camera pans are used to unveil the landscape and to show the relationship between the soil beneath our feet and the cosmological network above us. In most filmmaking this filming technique is used to pan towards a subject, here the landscape becomes the protagonist. This footage interweaves the micro and macro of the landscapes. The volcano that was ever a guiding form. Ideas of the mirage and the distortions of distances. The intensity of the sunlight.

Field recordings and notes from time spent in Chile are interwoven throughout including the sound of the flamingos in Bolivia and in Chile, the song of the llama and a traditional ocarina.

The time in Chile can be read about in more detail here