A Speech Radical And Two Fires
A Speech Radical and Two Fires flirts with the politics and poetics of social media’s proxy-erotics using materials, sites and media available in a strictly domestic, locked-down setting to collide cottage-core with at-home science lessons, zoom cocktail parties and Instagram filters, communities new to digitally-mediated events with the weary and eternally online.
Comprising these three short video works made between 2020 and 2022 for online events, this work considers how important it is to make contact, to correspond, to touch despite fears of contagion and collapse, to create intimacy and pay attention in the midst of difficulty.
The sharing of images connects us to each other, shows how we make sense of the strangest and most dislocating elements of our electronic communications as we navigate the aftermath of extended isolation, and long for greater proximity. Suggesting new figures of love in our times, A Speech Radical and Two Fires leaves us space to find it.
A Speech Radical and Two Fires was exhibited in Everything Is Made Of Light, at Bermondsey Project Space in May 2022.
Feu d’artifice : a paeon for Sophie was commissioned by Susanna Crossman for The Dinner Party Reloaded, and asked each guest to propose a toast to a woman they much admired. It was premièred at The Carthorse Orchestra online salon in 2021.
Cyanometer for my heart was made for an event due to be held in London in March 2020 that was cancelled. It uses a cyanometer, meteorological observations, and a social media scraper to construct a framework for the emotional weather.
Timeline Moons for Proxy Touching records the exchange of visual images between two protagonists across social media platforms as they search for ways to be remotely close while separated by borders and travel restrictions. The moon that touches me, also touches you, they say, snatching an image and sharing in the same moment, improvising personal gestures in the shared public space.
