more installation study stuff by sid branca
For this second iteration of this scavenged materials study, I tried taking myself out of it, and working purely with an assemblage of scavenged objects. all of the objects in this installation study (by no means a finished thing, just some more experiential sketching towards a future plan) are things that I acquired rather than bought—gifts, hand-me-downs, things taken from the trash. (except the paper on which the “scavenged” text was printed on, and the paint used on the cardboard— ideally these would also be scavenged in a later iteration.)
The text is from Sophocles’ cycle of plays Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, recomposed through erasure via blacking out with marker, and then further obscured by the pouring of peppermint oil on the pages, running the ink. The room was filled by the very strong smell of peppermint. There was also a short audio loop playing, the voices of my mother and father trying to work an audio recorder.
The above are a variety of details from this installation study; please see this post as well for more images of this iteration, and this post for the previous iteration.
As I continue this, I think I need to reintroduce human bodies as sculptural objects, just not my own, so I can continue to compose from an outside perspective. I also want to push harder on the audio and olfactory elements. I’d like to fill an entire small room with various stations, altars, sites, bodies, that are all continuous in a sort of horror vacui way, and with further explorations of erasure writing techniques working with ancient greek texts in a more contemporary (but still somehow existing not in the present) visual environment.