Ancestral Bodies
Image Still from Ancestral Bodies, digital film, 8 minutes, 2025
During the early stages of the Covid pandemic I began traveling to Poland. I wanted to know more about this mysterious place known within our family as "Pommern." The narration in this film takes the form of a fictional letter written to my Grandmother's sister, Margaret Anna Martha Kopitzke who was born in 1898 in Steinforth, Pomerania, Prussia. Part historical research, part ancestral meditation, this project relies on embodied and experiential ways of knowing and bearing witness to the things that have been buried and remain buried; particularly the complexities of identity within the Baltic region.
The cinematography used in Ancestral Bodies focuses on the Szczecin-based Pomeranian Historical Society Volunteer Group as they pull pieces of Pomeranian tombstones from the Oder River near Police, Poland. The group cleans, catalogs, and resurrects Baltic German cemeteries that have laid to waste since the WWII-era forced expulsions and displacement of the Poles in the east, and Baltic German populations from what is present day Northern Poland. Marek Łucak, the police commandant and volunteer group leader, specializes in the re-aquisition of stolen art and artifacts. As he catalogs the names inscribed on gravestones, he frequently makes phone calls to Christiane Karweik in Wolfsburg, Germany, who transcribes the now extinct Plattdeutsch language. It is her family's native tongue, a language considered "lesser than," in comparison to proper German. She reads and understands this language, but was never taught to write in it. I have discovered similar relationships to Plattdeutsch within my own family. It is closer to Dutch than the modern German languages.
The historical tension between Germans and Poles still exists to this day, evidenced in the lack of upkeep or care for the other group's ancestral remains, as well as residual fears from Polish families that Baltic Germans will try to reclaim their former family homes.
My family is Polish, Kashubian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Avar, Scandinavian and East German. Steinforth, My family's small ancestral village since 1600, currently lies dormant underground, the aftermath of the Russian invasion in February of 1945. We located the village using Lidar map technology, which detects any abnormalities or changes in topography. The perfect indentation of streets and the outlines of the foundations of buildings mirror the historical street maps of Steinforth. They are striking, appearing as though they have been covered in snow. The site is located in the Borne Sulinowo district- a historical military area dating back to Kaiser Wilhelm. My Aunt Margaret recalled hearing the soldiers during shooting practice while herding geese as a young child.
I chose an embodied approach to this film because I carry all of these stories deep in my body.. They are often intangible, like the mysterious Slavic and Germanic ghost stories my Aunts would mutter without any inflection-part of the everyday; yet functioning within another reality. The second component of this film will focus on our Kashubian heritage and the glass-like surfaces of a calm Baltic Sea., our ancestral waters that fed and supported us; a tangible body, another metaphor for our ancestral flesh and blood..
Screenings:
The Feminist Art Project Day of Panels at CAA for
The Politics of Identity & The Body as Medium in Feminist Practice,
February, 17, 2024 Chicago Hilton
Uniwersytet Pomorski w Slupsku, Poland
Pomeranian Culture Conference
October 17, 2025