Topography is a multi-format documentary project that explores the histories, and futures, of land use.
Set in and around America’s public lands, the project spends time in the Badlands, Death Valley, Fire Island, and Zion. From paleontologists to medicinal plant experts, rangers to ranchers, motel workers to tourists, environmental preservation to settler colonialism, seaside communities to seemingly desolate badlands—Topography fragments across time, species, scales, and histories to reveal how different perspectives shape the land and its futures.
Topography includes documentary films, live-edited performances, installations, interactive experiences, and community collaborations. This is a uniquely iterative project where formats co-evolve, contributing material and learnings to each other, and allowing the project to develop in community. Combining extensively researched documentary material with emerging technology—photogrammetry, game engines, and interactivity—Topography not only depicts ecological systems, but is an ecology of storytelling in itself.
Topography is a collaboration between Hannah Jayanti & Alexander Porter.
Various formats are supported by Sundance Institute, Sandbox Films, Catapult Documentary Film Fund, Brown Institute Center for Media Innovation, Headlands Center for the Arts Residency and Project Space, Mesa Refuge Residency, New York State Council on the Arts, McEvoy Family Award for Film/Video, UnionDocs, Ken Corday FDM Grow Grant, Agricultural Experiment Station Research Fellowship, Badlands National Park Arts Residency, Fire Island National Seashore Residency, National Park Arts Foundation.