TRT: 8:27
Single channel projection.
Untreated iron, scrim, brown cotton, embroidery thread, cables.
divinity surplus (2024) is a somatic meditation on the efficacy of hope as a tool for determining and structuring collective desires. Using the installation’s apparatus—a hybrid of a medieval torture rack and a Singer sewing machine—participants are compelled to question the nature of hope and what it might produce. What does it mean to hope for another? For their wellbeing? For the world? When we deploy hope as a visioning strategy, do we wish for a life akin to our own for the other? How do we cope with the dissonance in desires when we realize that our hope-induced vision does not necessarily map neatly onto that of our peers? What is lost in the reconciliation between the two?
Drawing heavily from medieval Christianity, the video projected on the apparatus’ surface assumes the twinned forms of both a blinking eye and a wound—more specifically, the final wound endured by Jesus Christ while affixed to the crucifix. The projection itself ‘bleeds’ through the scrim, layering two possible visions neatly atop each other. Here, the wound is a trap—drawing the viewer in and affixing them to a designated site in the room where a directional speaker beams the soundscape to them and only them. From there, that viewer is required to collaborate with the person operating the foot pedal to manually enable the flow of the embroidered captions that accompany the soundscape. Through the required labour of engagement, participants sweat to facilitate an instance of affective piety for each other, an experience that can only be made whole once the deed is done and the roles are reversed. The captions themselves are meant to serve as origin points for one’s consideration (and hopefully, complication) of the notion of hope itself. Unlike with Christ, however, when suffering grants you no salvation, how do you figure hope? For yourself or for the other?
What does it mean to facilitate an experience for another? Can you tell your partner to speed up for me? Can you make them slow down? Can you put your life in their hands? Can you negotiate it? Can you ride? Where do your visions align? Where do they fall out of intention with each other? Tell them what you hope to see? Tell them that you need them breathless. Tell them that you want to crawl. Sing until you sync, sing until you sink, be as slow as you need because time will find you regardless.
Direction, Camera, Editing- Kearra Amaya Gopee
Sound design- Compton Timberwolf and Olithea Anglin
Fabrication- Matt Lauterhahn
Textiles- Cal
Photographs courtesy Ally Caple.