Aboutface live pres. Holometaboly
 

Live music performance for Think Tank x Plantlife, Belgrave music hall, Leeds. 26-1-20

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All live instrumentation and electronics by Aboutface.

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Passages of Ovid's Metamorphoses recited by Jenna Whelan

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Recorded live and broadcast shortly after on NTS radio.

 

40 x special edition prints raising money for Inkwell Arts charity, Leeds. You can purchase them HERE. Also includes with a Creative Commons version of the live performance in full, and broken down into tracks to amdend, edit, remix and redistribute (non commercial).
100% of the sales (minus Bandcamp fees) will go to Inkwell.

A 1hr live performance and associative artworks that explore the four life stages of holometaboly (the metamorphic transformational stages of egg-larva-pupa-butterfly), intersected by a biographical representation of my own journey through the stages of depression.

 

The project also applies experimental plant-interaction generative techniques; plants, as benign as they appear, are in continual communication using electrical voltages, omitting a distress signals when being eaten by pests to initiatie coping mechanisms, displaying an external demeanour that contradicts the internal struggle – a behaviour often characterised in people during periods of depression and anxiety.


The project is a personal reflection of the symbolic and transformative parallels shared between the stages of metamorphosis and mental illness, as an opportunity to destigmatise vulnerability, and inspire personal development through creativity and connectivity.

 

The project also raises awareness of the detrimental effect child poverty has on the development on the brain, especially in the oxytocin system which is critically involved in emotional regulation, and can have a lifelong effect on stress-coping and mental wellbeing; some wards in Leeds now have 54% of children living in poverty.

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Thanks to Robbie Barrat for the plant-art step-by-step guide.