THE QUODDY FOLD is an intimate interaction between a woman, a house and the relics of its former tenants. In this one-hour film, Paulette Phillips slowly dismantles a derelict house that sits on the eastern shore of Nova Scotia in an area called West Quoddy. Bit by bit, layer by layer, surfaces are removed to expose new structures underneath in various levels of decay. From under multiple layers of wallboard and patterned wallpaper, old newspapers appear that reveal hints of history dating back to 1893. Despite the dust and mold, many details remain in place – a folded towel on the rack, dishes in the sink and cabinets – that make it look as though the people who had once lived there hadn’t really moved out but had left in a hurry (perhaps their ghosts are still hanging around). Wearing a face mask, the artist works through the different rooms, discarding insulation materials and roof battens. It is a long, dirty and arduous process, interrupted by views of the open Canadian winter landscape and the sea in various states of frozenness, until, once again, spring returns. From a moldy folder hidden somewhere inside the house, mildew-stained black-and-white photographs from the past century surface. Pictures of ships, landscapes with horses, and many portraits: serious looking men, young women in their best dresses, workers, children, and families – perhaps generations of them. Who these people are remains untold. The camera tracks the photographs as it has previously traced the surfaces of the house, sometimes zooming in on a detail or a face. In the end, the dismantled house collapses. Without the ambition of archeological fieldwork or nostalgic sentiment, Phillips studies the movement from wood to dust, damp paper to mold, and contemplates the notion of the house folding back into the land and sea. Likewise, also the anonymous family archive, only just retrieved, will in all probability follow the natural course of life. Phillips’s performance constantly seeks evidence of dissolving boundaries, thingness, history, and intersubjectivity of space, place, and species. Through the poetics of the ruin, THE QUODDY FOLD is an interrogation of dwelling and landscape that provides space to engage with the ecological, cultural and societal anxieties surrounding impermanence.