Communion

Alexandra Spence

Year the project commenced:2019 
Year it became impossible:2020 
Audience not reached:1000+​​​​​​​
Communion is/was an audiovisual performance that explores how sound mediates our relationship to place. In particular it explores our spiritual, tactile and historic relationship to trees and imagines the trees unique experience of time as felt through the vibration of sound. With the concept established it was to be further developed during an alumni residency with UNSW School of the Arts and Media and presented in the second half of 2020 at two major Australian festivals. All of became impossible when UNSW put residencies on hold and both festivals were cancelled due to the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns.
In preparation, Spence had been recording the creaks and groans of trees using specialized microphones. The performance was to feature raw and processed versions of these combined with analogue electronics, text and organic materials: leaves, seeds, and rocks, and would expand upon the performative aspects of Spence’s practice by experimenting with amplified objects, lighting, and physical movement in space. Sound, in its ephemerality and intangibility, allows us to re-imagine and re-create our surroundings through listening. Giving a playful nod to ritual, acts of divination and devotion, Communion reimagines our bodily limitations in order to examine the things that connect us to each other and to our surroundings. In year where proximity and tactility became taboo it seems an even greater pity that a work that needed neither was Covid-cancelled. Like others who suddenly found their world contracted, Spence found herself acknowledging the vibrancy and resonance of everyday objects and considering how a different understanding may alter our actions. She wants to explore this relationships in the hope that we might consider them with more care, and better respond to our surroundings in this time of climate disaster.
Collaborating artist - Elia Bosshard​​​​​​​

↑Back to Top