Wrapped in Earth

An experimental animated short that transforms the experience of chronic illness into a surreal, bioluminescent landscape. The film follows Elise, a young woman living with Bekhterev’s disease. During a therapeutic mud treatment, the boundaries between skin, earth, and consciousness begin to dissolve. Within the mud’s embrace, Elise enters a garden that is simultaneously her own body, a landscape pulsing with life both unfamiliar and independent. Her journey is not one of conventional healing, but of confrontation, awareness, and eventual symbiosis. This animation project is part of the ArChro research initiative led by Anna Ulrikke Andersen at NTNU. It draws on patient histories and archival research to explore experiences of pain, vulnerability, and care through a sensory, visual language. The work is inspired by mud therapy at the Dr. Simo Milošević Institute in Igalo, Montenegro, one of ArChro’s key case studies, where Norwegian patients have received treatment since 1976. The project asks: How can animation render the sensory and emotional experience of chronic illness and therapeutic care into a visual journey that reveals the body’s inner landscape of pain, vulnerability, and adaptation? The research is guided by Critical Disability Theory, which approaches the body with pain as a complete, complex environment rather than a machine to be fixed. The film moves beyond metaphors of “fighting” illness, instead exploring coexistence, connection, and care as alternative modes of engagement with the body. It also draws on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the lived body, with Elise’s inner landscape becoming this world itself, presented in its raw, sensory form. The visual universe is inspired by folklore and mythological cosmologies, especially branching life-tree motifs from Norse and Turkic traditions, and draws on the atmospheric landscapes of Theodor Kittelsen. Mythical beings such as Nøkken and Landvættir appear in this inner world, symbolizing boundary, protection, and balance.