Ben Eastham: We should start with the elephant in the room. Bubble reads in the context of lockdown as a meditation on loneliness, and its title is now more familiar in relation to the “support bubbles” that allow single adults living alone in the UK to meet with each other under special dispensation. Am I right in saying that you completed the film before the first lockdown? Were you thinking, even before the word took on that new meaning, of the tropical fish shop in East London in which Bubble is set as fulfilling a similar role: a social space, insulated from the surrounding world, in which otherwise isolated individuals could meet? 

Eleanor Mortimer: We did finish the film before the pandemic began. It’s strange to think of how the word “bubble” has taken on a new meaning since then! The title was thought up in a conversation with my friend, the filmmaker and writer Annina Lehmann, because it encapsulated the watery microcosm of the tropical fish shop, as well as the idea that we as individuals are all in little bubbles, drifting about in our own headspaces. Of course, the fish are in their own watery bubbles too, looking out at us, as we look in at them, as we all try and work each other out. “Bubble” also has a great meaning in cockney rhyming slang, which tickled me and the editor, Nina Rac: “you’re having a bubble” means “you’re having a laugh” (bath-laugh).

But yes, to return to your question, the film was always intended as a portrait of a place of connection, of a shared space which provides an antidote to loneliness in the city. George Monbiot wrote that loneliness doesn’t necessarily come about from being alone, rather from a sense of not being part of something bigger than yourself – a community, or group. That rings true for me. I was interested in the idea of a community formed from a hobby, like fish keeping.

BE: The video documents an encounter between humans and another species. People are shown looking at the fish; the fish look back. I was reminded of this line from John Berger's Looking at Animals: “With their parallel lives, animals offer man a companionship which is different from any offered by human exchange. Different because it is a companionship offered to the loneliness of man as a species.” Do you think of your work as engaged more broadly with the loneliness of humanity as a species, its artificial (and increasingly catastrophic) separation from the rest of the natural world? 

EM: That’s a really interesting thought! I am interested in the idea that as humans we have artificially separated ourselves from “nature,” as if we were not also part of it. I always wonder whether the way we have evolved to live has meant cutting off a part of ourselves. Observing the “parallel lives” of animals, as John Berger puts it so well, is a way of sidestepping preconceptions about how we live in order to unravel some of the constructs we have built up around ourselves; borders and belief systems, nations and capital. I am trying to draw attention to these belief systems which often allow for destructive behaviour, and question them. We’re destroying the planet yes, but ultimately we’re destroying ourselves. Maybe it’s time to change tack.

BE: Do you think of animals as muses for your work? I wonder if there's an attempt there to bridge that divide between humanity and other species, as in cave paintings that don't recognise any fundamental distinction between humans and other animals. 

EM: I had never thought of animals as muses! But I do go and watch crows in London Fields every time I am stuck on an idea or an edit… Like many of us, I am an anxious soul, with a very “what if…” runaway mind, and watching animals calms me down, because they engage fully with the physical world around them in the present.

BE: The video is also a portrait of a place: London's rapidly changing East End, in which established communities are being broken up by spiralling house prices and rapid gentrification. Your earlier video Territory, which follows Gibraltar's native Barbary macaques around the streets of an island whose sovereignty is still hotly disputed, also touches on the relationship between place and belonging. Do you think humans have a territorial relationship to the places in which we live? 

EM: Yes, and no! I think territoriality can be linked to isolation and fear. The more cut off we get from each other, the more territorial we become over whatever bit of the world we’ve put a fence around. The more fences and walls we build, the more we fear what is on the other side. Humans seek belonging, yes, and also roots, but do we need ownership over land to feel like we belong? Or do we just need to be part of a community? It’s the loss of that community which the people in Bubble are feeling so strongly, rather than a sense of exclusive ownership over East London.  

I live on a narrowboat, and we move around London, which means (maybe like early hunter-gatherers) we don’t build any sense of ownership over one particular patch. The threshold between public and private is blurred, but I have never felt less territorial in my whole life, rather I feel a greater sense of connection to so many parts of London. Even our cat, Billy, who grew up on our boat moving every two weeks, has a totally different relationship to territory than most land cats I know. He sees every boat and every park as an extension of home. We constantly get photo updates on boaters’ groups of him in other peoples’ boats curled up happily next to their own cats. All that is to say that we can be territorial, yes, but we don’t have to.

BE: Am I right in saying you're not from London (me neither)? How does that change your relationship to Terry’s Tropicals as a community space? Were you conscious of your own status as an outsider, perhaps even as an anthropologist? 

EM: I was born in London, but we moved to a market town called Woodbridge in Suffolk when I was eight, so I have that odd sense of belonging somewhere in between. However, I don’t think I ever felt like an outsider in Terry’s Tropicals. I’d spent enough time pestering them for advice about my own pet fish, Mmbop, and hanging out drinking tea before I started filming so I felt somewhat part of their community, because it is an open place – whoever you are, if you like aquatics, you’re in! When I’m making films I’m more interested in finding that common ground with the people I am filming, and with the audience too, rather than documenting difference. I tend to think of my camera as a means to connect, or a device to preserve what I love, rather than any kind of anthropological tool.

BE: Like your previous work, Bubble is situated in an urban context, serving as a reminder that even cities are spaces in which species cohabit. Could you imagine making a work about animals in “the wild,” or is it a mistake to think of “the wild” as distinct from “the city”? 

EM: I don’t think I’m a wildlife filmmaker: it’s the interconnection between animals and humans I am drawn to. I’m interested in what we can learn about ourselves as humans by imagining the headspace of an animal, and what they make of us. This isn’t really a fact-based process, more of a thought experiment!

It’s an intriguing question – whether such “natural habitats” or “wild” spaces exist. What, for example, would be our own “natural habitat”? I am interested in repainting the world as a place equally populated by humans and animals, whether we’re in the city or elsewhere, rather than one in which animals form a backdrop to whatever people are doing. We shouldn’t be so arrogant to think that we are in control – look at how a microscopic organism has put a stop to all of our activities! This world in which people and animals have an equal role is one recognisable to kids, incidentally. I’m always pleased when kids like my films!

BE: One of the characters in Bubble states that he would be quite happy to be a fish, which brings to mind the species dysmorphia of the character in your work Bird. Why do you think people empathise with animals? Is that related to the sense that we have lost our connection to that part of ourselves? Do you, personally, find solace in animals?

EM: I do find the company of animals calming. As I mentioned above, I like watching crows when I’m stressed, and foxes too. When I had a fish (before Mmbop the Siamese fighting fish died in the heatwave of 2018), I used to love to sit and watch him move about, just like the people in the film do with their fish. There’s a simplicity and a quiet wisdom to the way animals behave, which I find inspiring. The story behind Bird was that I spent a lot of time researching species dysphoria and speaking to people who experience it. In many cases (not all) it can be linked to a trauma. The intention with Bird was to validate, through film, that feeling of believing you are a bird by creating a screen space for the main character to “fly” and escape her human form. There’s a great book about trauma by Peter Levine called Waking the Tiger, which is all about how we can learn to overcome the effects of trauma by learning from the way animals cope with traumatic events or near-death experiences. But that’s a conversation for the next film, perhaps!