EXOSMOSIS

Exosmosis was a durational performance centred around interaction between Virginia Barratt as performer and Em König’s responsive live soundscape. Working with a team of collaborators, the artists explored the pivotal role annihilation plays in transformation and growth in a work encompassing light, a wall of sound, sticky props, and the body.

Barratt was suspended from the ceiling in a cocoon, oozing slime onto the floor below. While suspended, Barratt recited texts, sang, and generated bodily noise that König broke down and remixed live.

The live-streamed performance on Twitch by Jem is a Hologram (Lauren Abineri) was projected onto a wall of the museum synchronous to the live performance—another portal into the event—and accompanied by an online synthesiser, live-coded by Lauren Abineri using samples from V Barratt’s voice and playable by remote audiences during the performance.

“Performance art is a powerful tool for artists working with this kind of content. Using the body as their medium and overlaying it with sound and light allows the audience to explore complex ideas in a sensory emotionally, intellectually responsive way.” — Joanna Kitto, Samstag Associate Curator.

Sometime in 2021, when temporality was both stretching and dissolving into strings of unformed matter—as was I—I was listening to a transmission from Elae Moss. They are a multimodal creator living on unceded Lenapehoking territory, who thinks and works with Speculative methods. Elae introduced me to the scientific concept of imaginal discs—the cellular data inside the larva of insects that undergo metamorphosis. There are “wing discs”, “leg discs”, and other discs dedicated to the development of the insect.

One of the most beautiful of these processes observed by humans is the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. This change takes place within a chrysalis, which is the secret chamber of transformation. Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar undergoes an autophagic process. It secretes digestive juices in order to break itself down into slime, goo, soup, and undifferentiated matter. The imaginal discs are then released, able to begin their work of building something new from the unformed matter of the caterpillar—the completely different form of a butterfly. The caterpillar is and is not the butterfly, and vice-versa.

What is interesting to me about this process, is that this transformation can only arise out of complete annihilation, and that all the data necessary for the creation of newness already exists in the primordial goo that results from this destruction. A new relationship of matter to content and form is required in order for the caterpillar to become butterfly.

All form arises from and dissolves into undifferentiated matter, without cessation. From the abyss to the void—one and the same. Beings, buildings, machines, systems, communities—one and the same. Matter is mobilised by desires and intention. Revolution and oppression are differentiated only through desire.

The “imaginal discs” necessary for individual and collective social, ecological and systems transformation are always already seeded. We just need to dissolve, and become…

— V Barratt

Collaborators

• Virginia Barratt — concept, object construction, live vocals and performance, video
• Em König [sadworm] — concept, object and instrument construction, live sound processing
• Lauren Abineri — rugs, synth coding, Twitch channel live streaming
• Mistress Tokyo — rope design and pod dressing, performance assistance
• Margie Medlin — lighting design and operation
• Amanda Calder — object fabrication, installation assistance
• Jam Dickson — pod steelwork
• Live streaming by Replay

Thanks to Erica Green, Emily Clinton and Samstag Museum of Art; Joanna Kitto; Jenn Greer-Holmes and Replay; Craig Williams and Mosaic; Ollie and Matt from Mr Rigger; Harvey Stanton; and Triton Tunis-Mitchell.

The rocks that form part of the sounding instrument are from Kokatha Country, and were returned to country after the performance.

Links

• Samstag Museum of Art
• Exosmosynth — keyboard synthesiser by Lauren Abineri from V Barratt’s voice samples
• On Art — V Barratt and Em König in conversation with Joanna Kitto (podcast)