“Space has no objective reality except as an order or arrangement of the objects we perceive in it, and time has no independent existence apart from the order of events by which we measure it” -Lincoln Barnett (on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity)

 

 

Punctum is a sound installation, which uses objects from the Victorian era to evoke absence and memory. The sound clip contains a female voice reciting the Victorian poem “Only a Little Shall We Speak of Thee” by Mary E. Coleridge and the ambient silence in the exhibiting space. The recorded voice signifies the absent body. Victorian poems were circulated as “acoustic devices” for the mediation of voice and worked as a mechanism for the disembodiment of voice. When a poem is spoken aloud, its auditory effects often seem to exceed the speaking voice. Poems are transcriptions or prescriptions for voice, some locate, while others dislocate a speaking subject by emphasizing absent voices, empty echoes and displaced dialogue; some look for voices mediated by print and visual technologies, while others hear oral recitation and musical effects as a remainder that appeals to the ear as well as the eye.

 

The amalgamation of all these objects produces the idea of a possible event, or indeed an impossible event, rather than the re-presentation of an actual occurrence. It presents the melting together of then and now, a possible past produced in the present, a false memory, being laid out for us to indulge in and get carried away by. The intimacy between the individual and the garment, which is a Victorian nightdress, remains even after the individual is gone it retains the form of the absent body like a second skin. Clothes thus become remnants of individuals and markers of personal memory and absence. The fusion of the voice along with the garment and the vocabulary of the architecture render the installation piece fleshlike, evoking the absent human body. The space is a living tissue constantly changing and adapting to events. The discrete details are not immediately perceptible to the viewer, but only emerge after a period of close scrutiny. This slowing down of vision is intentional in order to bring the viewers attention to the aural. The Punctum - whether via the eye or the ear - is a difficult, if not impossible thing to pin down. Visual memory presents, whereas sonic memory suggests. The nooks and crannies of the abandoned Victorian house are opened by sound; and memories and narratives are replayed and conceived. The materials sampled and collaged together emphasize the tension between the now and the past in current perception and draws the listener into its production. I use the temporality of the recording for its particular motion of looping, circling back and recycling time: for its refusal to adhere to a formal end point. The phenomena of duration in playback also ‘deals in the confusion of temporal distinctions- between past, present and future,’ emphasizing the durational as kinetically connected to the continuous. Memory according to Bergson, is the intersection of mind and matter, this complicates the idea of present perception by placing its trigger in the past. In this way memory is forever becoming and has never been and is wholly dependent on the individual’s encounter and perception.

 

During the stages of discussing the thematic for In the Expanded Field, I had time and again referred to an exhibition I saw at the David Roberts Art Foundation, called A House of Leaves. Much like the novel it is based on, A House of Leaves borrows different languages, tells multiple narratives and asks its viewer to become a co-author in order to encounter an event as a collective effort to define an art form. Rather than being structured around an external theme selected by the curator and “illustrated” with artworks, the exhibition self-organized internally, the process mostly came from the artworks and the building they were placed in. Since it was in a constant state of flux, the exhibition was never the same and never entire, but always virtually composed and completed by visitors: the gallery as a deferred action and a space of encounter. The exhibition has left a huge impression on my practice and my approach towards exhibiting. Treating action and encounter as artistic mediums In the Expanded Field attempted to question how the act of exhibiting can accommodate the processes and enquiries of artistic practice as both ‘action’ and ‘event’. An event is comprehended as a ‘unique confluence of circumstances’; it is ‘temporary punctual’ and therefore ephemeral. An event could have ‘repeatable structure’, allowing the event to be repeated or re-presented. The evental is the concrete, malleable and active. It is dynamic and multiple, but most importantly it is made up of temporal spaces and experiences. The work exists when it is installed, and then, when de-installed, it seems to disappear. Hence having the quality of being discontinuous and yet periodic. The works existence can be understood as a series of events. The event creates and is inseparable from space. It forces space to constantly change, adapt and adopt it. The space becomes the event or organism itself, not just a container or a background phenomenon.

 

Within my work temporality lends itself as the primary medium, where any material, composed in if not contaminated by repetition is spatially encountered both in time and of time. My practice researches the intricate ways in which the voice acts within and without the body of the speaker in the space and time of the live event and the recording. Like the event of recording, the voice is live and once spoken, retreats to the past while signaling the future. The voice originates in the body of the performer and is caught by the ears of the spectator; it exists in the time and space of performance. When only the voice is presented, it has the potential to act almost like a strange body in itself, which can interrogate the gaze, and practices its own unfixed autonomy and evoking absence. The act of listening to a recording sparks new connections with the live event of encounter, bridging time and dislocating the voice from the once present body. My work involves the use of various media to bring the viewers attention to the aural. The act of exhibiting creates a situation of focused listening wherein the viewer can encounter the aural. The aural is ephemeral – ever-changing and forever in flux; just like time, we cannot isolate a single moment of encounter of the aural other than in the actual encounter of the event. Exhibiting my work in this manner works in sync with my current practice, as the ephemerality of the event in time is equivalent to the nature of sound.