Emilija Škarnulytė’s film Sirenomelia explores a distant imprint of humanity on the world’s surface. In siren form, her exploration of the decommissioned NATO base in the Arctic circle, is as beautiful as it is haunting. This human construction is an abandoned effort by northern powers to position itself, and control movements between the northern nations. But it appears to us as remnants of an alien world, accompanied by quasar sounds, or noises of distant objects.

Like whales who can echolocate distant objects through their sonar, this siren creature might have similarly found this distant human construction. Though, now devoid of human life, but encrusted upon its submerged foundations is ocean life growing upon it, even in frigid temperatures, as seen through the eyes of the mermaid.

The mermaid is perhaps our future selves, wading through our past and trying to decode our creations; our legacy. As the namesake of this film, the condition called sirenomelia, are we viewing a potential future of humanity, adapting to the rapid change of the climate by returning to the water. And what is the cost of this evolution, but to view our past through an alien lens, of a collapsed civilization from a bygone era.

The siren explores the base, but unlike the lively civilization that entrances the little mermaid, there is nothing to truly hold her attention. She swims through its canals and docking bays, past it, away from some human archeological site; remnants of old empire, and back to the open Ocean. She swims away. Perhaps our future is no longer on land.