Letters From Cyprus

digital video and sound 

Elika Gallery, Athens, GR 

A series of works tracing a written correspondence between London and Cyprus transforming them into short videos that explore the visual, sonic and biorhythmic substance of intimate communication. The work was first deveoped as an online residency with Elika Gallery (Athens, 2017) and subsequently reworked as an immersive multi-channel video and sound installation at the solo exhibition One Life Down and Eight to Go (Nicosia, 2018).
 
Negotiating paradoxes of intimacy and distance and how their interplay informs internal and external relays of communication, the processes of reconfiguring letters into short videos whilst preserving their original (written) contents lead to a new form of narrative storytelling which intentionally or unintentionally divulges the thought processes, impulses and emotions preceding the writing process.

The visual scope of the works serves as forms of accessibility to physical locations around inaccessible landscapes, where the letters are written, on a constant state of mobility, while the sonic scope of the project combines multiple layers of vocal narrations delicately arranged on top of each other in varying volume outputs as the written word transforms into spoken word, intimate confession or digital lullaby woven in an intricate scope of encirclining natural sounds preserved in their ephimeral biophonies.

Created specifically with the intention of being ‘instagrammable’ each video has a duration of no more than 60 seconds each and was regularly uploaded in sequential order in order to formulate fragments of a broader narrative, exploring whether the use of instagram can serve as a space of ‘enhanced intimacy’ conditioned entirely by the manner of its use. Filmed, recorded and distributed using earlier smartphone models, the work sought to question, challenge and redefine roles and functions of social media platforms in the context of intimate exchange.