91Èȱ¬

The movement of weather and seasons in opposite hemispheres is particularly present in a relationship conducted ‘long distance’, an increasingly common mode of romance as national borders close and lovers are separated. These two geopolitical factors, when seen in close-up, play into an effect of being constantly on-edge, attuned to the normative structures imposed upon time – time zones, waking while the other sleeps – and weather, with seasons that become less intelligible each year.

Madeleine Stack’s 'Portable Monument', with an original soundscape composed and performed by Mikatsiu, seeks to elaborate on these experiences, building a language that can fathom the extreme forms of distance and closeness that are understood simultaneously when traversing borders and oceans via contemporary communications technology. This can include the minutiae of bodily abundance and its political possibilities, the ethics of queer love and care, tropics as space invoking refusal of capitalist time, and the poetics of attention and record of the intimacy of daily life. The sound work passes through various states of weather and technological movement, speaking to ongoing experiences of international love and closed borders.

New Creatives is supported by Arts Council England and 91Èȱ¬ Arts.

By Madeleine Stack
Portable Monument ft. Mikatsiu
Producer: Jennifer Boyd