ANDREW GOODMAN

Momo

Momo draws its title and language from a text of the same name by early C20th playwright Antonin Artaud, which explores the terror of the author’s increasing mental instability and dissolution of his sense of self. In the installation Artaud’s text is reconfigured by being cut up and reconstructed through the participants’ movement, as his internal dialogue is remade as a spatial and transpersonal experience, and the porous nature of his psyche is literalized in the sculptural forms.

Momo is one of a series of artworks in which I explore the affectual force of threatening, abrasive or disturbing sounds as a more difficult and disruptive type of relational connection to bodies than that which is often found in interactive artworks. As a part of this exploration into affect, the words spoken in the artwork contain many hidden or micro-perceptible layers that act directly on the body rather than being perceived through the ears. Generative algorithms shift and evolve according to the changes in movements and light, creating increasing entangled and non-linear relations between the viewers, the space and the work over time. The works utilise analogue sensors, sound and light to make topological and dynamic but inexact feedback loops between bodies, sculptural forms and technologies. This attempts to avoid mapping or fixing of bodies and instead allow more entangled but open and playful connections and disconnections in a system that might be thought of as ecological.