Honours Examination 2021: Saskia Morris (u5562879)
Arresting the Echo: Acknowledging Loss in the Disembodied Present
Arresting the Echo (installation view), calico, cash bags, lemon juice, cotton, speaker wire, dictation machine, talk box, speakers, amplifier, custom vinyl record, record player, 2021. Photo: Brenton McGeachie 2021.
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In Arresting the Echo, I worked with reproduction apparatuses that record and reposition the voice as a political tool that can be used to enact dismissed rituals. The project culminated in three performances that use ‘Empathy Apparatuses’ to extend my capacity to approach and make space for incomprehensibility. Although the research was motivated by the loss of my grandmother and the inability to mourn her passing, this body of work ultimately addresses loss as more than the death of a family member. Instead, it considers how we learn to sit with loss during the cultural turn towards disembodiment and within the Anthropocene, which views our current epoch as one deeply implicated in oscillating extremes of social change and extinction events.
Click on each work title to see details, prototypical work and supporting documentation.
Empathy Apparatus One: A System for Embodying the Echo
Empathy Apparatus Two: A System for Amplifying the Echo
Empathy Apparatus Three: A System for Responding to the Echo
