Correspondence
Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer
Correspondence is an audio-visual soundscape that explores how we make sense of gaslighting through sentimental and melodramatic ideas, not only about romance and relationships, but also recovery. It draws on a feminist tradition of 'endurance' art, which is characterized by themes of repetition, bodily labour, fatigue, and boredom.
The title speaks to the different ways in which noises, images and ideas correspond (or, rather, do not correspond) with each other in the context of gaslighting, abuse and oppression. This piece explores the stories we tell about these connections and stretches the human voice to hear alternatives. In so doing, it tries to better understand gaslighting without overlooking people's own lived and ambiguous languages for what they are experiencing.
Text description of the video
This audio-visual soundscape includes video clips looking out to sea where waves breaking against a beach with large pebbles dotted about. The colours of this clips are mostly blues and greys. This clip is interspersed with other video clips of plastic bottles being washed up onto the beach and, in some video clips, moving along with the wind. Inside the different plastic bottles there appears to be white paper rolled up with black writing across it.
The accompanying audio features the sounds of waves breaking and various instruments (some sounding electronic and others classical). The same words are repeated throughout in slightly different versions and in different tones of voice. The voice is sometimes singing, sometimes speaking. The singing voice is sometimes in tune, sometimes not. The voice sounds emotionally varied as it repeats the following words:
when she said
let’s get a house at the coast
I know what you thought
little idyll, at most a little convalescence
something in the body
but she was asking you
to live on the brink
of something happening out there
and what you only heard about
read about
it washes up, you know
every day
she gathers it up, you know
every day