Echoes and Afterlives, performed publication with soundscape

Collaboration with Dr Wiebke Leister (London College of Communication, UAL)

Exploring in depth the psychological and aesthetic significance of voice and face masking through collaboration on a live improvisation with collage and soundscape. Echoes and Afterlives, performed publication with soundscape will emphasis on liveness and re-mediation between sound, still image and performance by using the sounds generated from the gestures of cutting and folding the pages and improvising with these sonic environments, which in turn will give impulses to the live collage.

Wiebke Leister is a German artist living in London. She studied photography at Essen University and the Royal College of Art, and has exhibited and published her work internationally at Galerie Mousonturm Frankfurt, Dryphoto arte contemporanea Prato, Školská 28 Prague, Photographic Centre Nykyaika Tampere, Society for Contemporary Photography Kansas City, Fremantle Arts Centre, Australian Centre of Photography Sydney, Goethe Institut London, Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Radio Resonance 104.4FM, Centre for the Arts Hereford, Danielle Arnaud London, among others; also receiving several awards such as Kodak Nachwuchs Förderpreis, TrAIN, College Art Association, LeadAward, Herbert Schober Preis, European Award for Women Photographers, Plat(t)form 08, Nourypharma; among others. Her works challenge the limitations of photographic representation and individual likeness, often focusing on the human face as a canvas, a medium or an agent. She works with photography, collage, drawing, text and performance. She is Course Leader for MA Photography at London College of Communication, co-organizer of the Photography and the Contemporary Imaginary research hub, convener of the Theatre of Photography research network and a core member of the Photography and the Archive Research Centre at the University of the Arts London, and has also worked with different cultural institutions, organizing conferences, events and exhibitions. ‘Echoes and Transformations’ looks at the boundaries between embalming and enmasking: being in a skin and under a skin, in and under a mask, looking at a mask and seeing through a mask as something that equally changes one’s gait and one’s voice while playing with sensations of displacement and transformation. The work treats the human face less as a façade but as an object that – even though central to our understanding of what it means to be human – is only ever in the process of approximating a subject: being filled by a subject, worn on the face of a subject. A process of becoming invested with meaning that might occur during the encounter with an image-object, possibly inverting the relationship of the person who sees and that what can be seen. The work exists in different formations, including prints, collages, live performance and publications.