In order to challenge the understanding of nature situated apart from human, Shape Shifting suggest another arrangement where human and nonhuman join relations and productively interact. It outlines an affective cartogra- phy of a specific landscape, which exhibits a high natural diversity and is called “satoyama” in Japanese.“Mapping onscreen the enmeshments and intimacies that bind together humans and other-than-humans such as weeds — what Shape Shifting does by delving into the Japanese satoyama (the border zone or area between mountain foothills, yama, and the arable flat land next to the villages, sato) — Lylov and Marhöfer show us that exploring the other-than-human by means of film is already a means of shaping affective relationships encompassing human and machinic fellows. The joyful myriad of other-than-human agents potentially implicated are far from being limited to organic actants... Shape Shifting reminds us that other-than human subjects hint at specific modes of sensing, feeling, affecting, and being affected. Filming here means attuning human makers and human spectators to the sensibilities of the soil, weeds, and wind. In this sense, the film is an experiment in becoming with, a matter of alliances and counter-encounters.” (Teresa Castro)
