2016—MAY

“The domain of the stranger is always an elusive elsewhere.”

In 2013, I was invited to Ghana to take part in a sound art + architecture residency. The original invitation was to  collaboratively design, constuct, and record in a recording studio with local musicians. However, upon arriving, I soon discovered that no one else from the international design team was actually coming anymore. All of a sudden I found myself to be lone English-speaking visitor in the small town Abetenim, in rural Ghana. 
 
The work probes the complexities of travel as a process of becoming. It explores the traveler as trickster; the one who passes through, slips the weave, and navigates the uncertain with a capactiy to shape-shift and discover fresh ways to interact with the outside world.

Audiovisual materials gathered during my time in Ghana, along with the reflections from a journal that I kept throughout my stay, offer many entry points for deepening my on-going understanding of the trip.

Alluding to memory, desire, expectation, migration, communication breakdowns, and the jigsaw of identity formation, the (re)collection diffuses an audio collage of spoken extracts from journal entries, literary references, location recordings captured during the trip, processed samples from Ghanaian musicians and sounds of travel ephemera. An “alien” reality emerges, and offers an ever-evolving glimpse into a trancendental Other.

Installed at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, A Weave / The Fragment features an 8’x8’ black box, 8 channels of audio, generative programming and sound design, audio reactive LEDs, and kente scarves given to me marking the start and end of the trip.

Additional audiovisual documentation coming soon. 


8’-8” room, audio, voice, custom software, DMX lighting, electronics, ephemera