For José
A sonorous (voice and sound), subvisual topography of a nocturnal, sacred ‘landscape’ of on of the Magaio villages. The work has the form of a 10-minute, experimental ‘soundfilm’ where voices and sounds guide the recording of images. The artist’s interest in incorporating video here is in working with the oral/aural and the visual together assynaesthetic manifestations of voice.
Each ‘place’ in the topography is animated via persons giving voice to mysterious, sacred, ancestral, spiritual, and/or other worldly experiences they had at or after dark at a location in their village or its surrounds, either alone or with others: a mysterious experience of nature or an animal, an extraordinary dream about or in a place, a conversation with ancestors at a significant place, or a ‘vision,’ ‘revelation,’ or other form of sacred encounter (a sign from the divine, a message from an angel, a gift from the spirit world, etc.).
Suzanne Barnard is Associate Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA, USA), an experimental narrative filmmaker, and a clinical psychologist. She received her Ph. D. from Loyola University of Chicago, and completed a Post doctoral Fellow ship at George town University and a certificate in Digital Filmmaking at New York University.
She is co-editor, with Bruce Fink, of Reading Seminar XX: Lacan’s Major Work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality, and has published many articles on Lacanian, Deleuzean, French feminist, and post structuralist approaches to gender, sexuality, and film.