Obstinate document
- lexi welch
- Graduate Fine Arts Department, Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
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Student Creative Production Grant
Obstinate document (Rami and Bill), digital audio, subwoofer, glass, 2023.
How does precarity propel toward disappearance? In what ways is disappearance coded negatively in larger cultural systems that prioritize memory and recovery? What is possible when we lean away from narrative history-telling?
Obstinate document is a series of sound scores composed of low frequency bass installed via subwoofers. A variable collection of glass panes leans against the front of each subwoofer, rattling along with the score. The thumping, irregular audio channels are composed from recorded oral interviews in specified locations wherein an ‘interviewee’ has experienced fleeting collectivity. These works utilize bass vibrations as a method of transmitting and conducting alternative social memory through architecture and bodies. Instead of investing in resurrection or recreation, this project learns from histories of disappearance and impermanence by following strategies of stuttered time across thresholds of hearing, seeing, and feeling. This work challenges linear memory projects by exalting and prioritizing what has been forgotten, or what exists as unspoken, embodied inheritance.