Embodied performative acts are part of my deep listening methodologies that attempt to go beyond superficial awareness to explore sensorial, more-than-human life and spaces, and metaphysical connection. It's a term I've borrowed from sound composer Pauline Oliveros who stated deep listening requires entering into an active listening state utilizing sonic perception, improvisation, and bodily engagement. I've broadened this concept to include any modalities that help me connect to body, self, and community which includes human, more-than-human beings (animal, plant, water, etc.), and the immaterial (spirit).
For this series, my deep listening mode of connection was achieved through laying on, underneath, wrapping, and cocooning myself in a light blue cloth and various other shroud materials such as paper, lace, and tufting. I utilize shrouds as symbolic signifiers of grief-and-loss, absence and presence of the body, and in-between states. The imagery in this series represents grief-and-loss I'd been feeling and my attempts to become more attuned to my internal and external environments as a method of processing that grief.
The images are created from video footage capturing these moments. I lay or stood in various locations on Hornby Island, BC in the unceded traditional territories of the K'omoks First Nation where I have familial and community ties, history, and memory. Over a period of four seasons, I moved around the island documenting, creating quiet repeating performative acts. The Island of Kos in Greece was another location that spoke to me for its sense of history and ghosts. I spent several days there engaged in deep listening activities.
I asked other people to engage in this deep listening act, two images of them are included. ©2024