Images: Laura Rosser's work in Resonating Bodies
In February, I was in Plymouth as an invited interlocutor as part of the exhibition Resonating Bodies by Karen Abadie and Laura Rosser, The Levinsky Gallery, Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth. On 6 February 2024 we engaged in an ‘in-conversation’ exploring themes of the exhibition. Together we discussed various tactics for leaning into the unknown, addressing the messy materiality of uncertain encounters between human and machine bodies. During Summer 2024, I will be producing a piece of writing in relation to this encounter.
About the exhibition: Resonating Bodies explores the complexities of relationships between humans and machines. The exhibition responds to the fragility and uncertainty that we face in our increasingly digital and automated world. At a time when our sense of being is in a state of flux, the artists, Karen Abadie and Laura Rosser, lean into this unknown through the materiality of the machine. The interplay of human and nonhuman machine bodies are messy and challenged through the corporeality of the work. The machines resonate, clatter and converse in the space, through an entangling of analogue and low-fi technologies, celluloid, paper and ink. Each artist embraces the errors, slip-ups, scratches and ruptures that emerge through working with old, often broken, or malfunctioning technologies. The collective artworks pose questions around political, cultural and societal breaking down, which instead might be seen as a means to repair, renew, regenerate and refresh. The artists’ interdisciplinary practices challenge misconceptions of analogue machines as ‘obsolete’ or ‘outdated’ and reimagine human and nonhuman relationships in these precarious times.
As part of this visit, I also gave guest lectures within the frame of the fine art course at the University of Plymouth and also at the University of Falmouth. Whilst in Falmouth, Katrina Brown and I also presented a performance reading from our collaboration Dorsal Practices.