Corin Sworn

Image: George Hampton WaleImage: George Hampton Wale

eco co location

Saturday, 27 November 2021

Emerging through physical and verbal discussions between Claricia Parinussa and Corin Sworn, eco co location explores dispersed sensation and variously suspended and compressed timeframes in response wildly shifting notions of scale in the digital realm and empty labour shells left by late capitalism.  The performance envolved a site responsive journey a to a vacant office space within a near-empty suburban business park.

Moving within the vast, stripped-out space, Sworn and Parinussa draw attention to the broad cloudscape visible through the building’s encircling windows. Clouds, employed as signifiers of data storage, insinuate connection between the material world and the complex concealed processes of corporate industries which, while remaining hidden and obscured, present as insubstantial, almost transcendent, ephemeral non-places.

Yet clouds, as shape shifting systems of condensation, have also long served as playful sites for shape spotting and make believe. As such, they can also speak to algorithmic machines which in a similar way, condense data whilst seeking to extrude patterns. These machines do so largely through correlation and abduction, seeking plausible generative associations without recourse to verification.

To engage these (in)operative metaphors and their associated processes Parinussa and Sworn have spent a period working into the affective qualities of feedback, delay and orientation amid systems that distribute sensation and trouble connection with echo.

This is the first in a series of five events entitled ‘Moving in Relation’ through which Sworn continues to research human interrelationships with technology. Working with dancers, academics and 'robot vision' equipped cameras, Sworn is developing a discursive and experimental event series that explores algorithmic thought, datafication and their influence on physical bodies while seeking to make obscure knowledge immanent and palpable.

Credits
Performance with sonic and sculptural installation: Claricia Parinussa and Corin Sworn.
Sound Composition: Claricia Parinussa,
Soft Sculpture and Costume: George Hampton Wale.
Sound technician: Guy Veale.

Thanks to the Leverhulme Trust, Creative Scotland, and The Common Guild, Glasgow.