Space Chords (2023)
HD video / colour / stereo / 5:43 min
Space Chords is a record of a grieving body - of a grief that is constant, coloured and overbearing. The name Space Chords is taken from Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation, in which the term is employed to allude to music. Where a musical chord is the simultaneous sounding of multiple pitches or frequencies, a space chord is the shape that emerges from the simultaneous movement of separate limbs. As such, the practice of performing or embodying sets of space chords becomes a kind of language.
With this in mind, this work examines the potential for a language of movement to help the body express what words often cannot, and how employing such a language may be a practice of care for the grieving body. Through a series of repeated gestures, sound and text, the film navigates the entangled relationship between grief and memory, allowing for both a verbal and non-verbal dialogue to emerge between the two.
A previous iteration of Space Chords was screened as a two-channel installation as part of the 2021 Goldsmiths MFA and MA Artists' film & Moving Image degree show.