Hear/Here
Hear/Here
Collaboration between Katrina Garvey + Lisa Kurtz
Audism is the belief that the ability to hear makes one superior to those with hearing loss, while research shows that the ‘lack of information in one sense (e.g., audition) somehow instigates the deprived cortical area to process information from the intact modalities (e.g., vision and touch)’[1].
Hearing and not hearing presents different opportunities in perception.
Working in collaboration, photo-video-installation artists Katrina Garvey and Lisa Kurtz have used attentive listening and responsive iterative visual production as a methodology, largely removing the privilege of the spoken word for sense-making.
This exhibition explores ideas about the unknown and ‘other’. Building on these themes already present in the artists’ practices the collaboration works to create a reciprocation between hearing/ not hearing, knowing/ not knowing.
As there is nothing inherent in a space that makes it deaf or hearing, the exhibition produces a temporary porous space between cultures. The artists invite the audience to become intermediaries between the cultures, actors in the experience of other ways of knowing.
[1] Merabet L. B., Pascual-Leone A. Neural reorganization following sensory loss: The opportunity of change. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2010;11:44–52
Photo credits, artist talk: Joe Ruckli
Artist Statement: Lisa Kurtz
My practice explores ideas of the uncomfortable and unknown. In recent bodies of work I have examined how human spaces operate differently to natural spaces, and, as an urban dweller, my uneasiness in nature.
This exhibition has allowed me to explore those ideas further, in collaboration with fellow artist Katrina Garvey.
The working title for the show was Unknowable. I am hearing, Katrina is deaf. Our hypothesis was that we could never really know what it would be like to be the other, but that we could use our work to move towards understanding.
Knowing that my voice was useless, this paradoxically lead me to focus my work on sound.
Without sound, concepts of place begin to shift. What we once know is no longer.
Working with Katrina has changed my perception of deafness. What I was once thought I knew is no longer.
Feelings of discomfort or confusion can pass, and can be replaced by curiosity and thoughtfulness.
The acoustics of place
The sounds of the human and the natural, taken for granted by hearing bodies. Removing sound, we let go of previous ways of knowing. We perceive the world differently and find new ways of understanding.
Lisa Kurtz, 2023
Looped digital video, no sound
Photo credit: Tammy Law
Ocean, channel
Separating the ocean from its sound, placing the senses on separate channels. The horizon, the place where the known and unknown meet, reinterpreted.
Lisa Kurtz, 2023
Looped digital video, no sound
