“A right hand, palm facing up and fingers together, rests on the textured cream carpet. An egg sits atop. Siân’s fingers seem to twitch, before enclosing the egg, gradually applying pressure until the – sudden – rupture. You attune to the straining muscles in her hand, before the shell cracks, crunching like glass in her fingers; more crystalline than before, now all else is taken away. Siân’s fingers clutch these shards, holding them tight and tenderly, a few seconds longer than you anticipated. Her hand opens again, revealing the imprints of her skin, and the shape left by the palm. It’s an act of wanting to know the material, a kind of hunger. The act ends in waste, a ruptured form. Or seems to, but keep watching. The process rewinds itself, undoing, back to the beginning, closing with wholeness. A seeming act of violence journeys through catharsis; from what could have been, back to where we began, but changed. I left the film to play, enjoying the rustle of the shell.”

Edward Ball, The Sensual World, 2020