The film Lesson (2024) was made using one hundred feet of 16mm film. Barefoot, a figure flicks and manoeuvres what appears to be a human bone across a polished concrete floor with dexterousness and skill. The bone can be seen shooting beyond the frame or riding up the arch of the foot in a game of control and manipulation. What becomes evident during this short, looped performance, is that the footage is running in reverse. Where we might assume, and perhaps know, the figure is asserting their dominance over an inanimate object, what we see is coded differently altogether. The bone, so loaded with mortality in the face of the life it is in dialogue with, is chasing the figure with its own agency and determination. A comical and yet harrowing reversal of fates played out in an unsettling silence and an uneasy pace. Perhaps the lesson that the title alludes to is one of humility; Can ‘man’ be so sure of its dominance over ‘things’? Are we ourselves determined by that which surrounds us? Are we not all, in the end, at the mercy of time and all it throws at us?