I have been researching essence of ‘home’ for several years, both my own and others’ stories of home and belonging, or lack of. I have sought to do this principally through the medium of the sonic, emphasising the importance of voice as testimony, and ‘deep listening’ (Bull & Back). However, I tend to experiment with combining writing with sound; often recording the vocal delivery of writing, mixed with real and imagined field recordings, and composed music.
In Human Space the theorist Bollnow conceives of home as a process of going away in order to return; essentially an attempt to replicate the comfort and warmth of the womb. In this vein, this short piece represents an epiphany of sorts: it struck me suddenly while away from home on holiday with my mother, that she is the key to answering the question ‘what is home?’, and that her story, especially of rebuilding her life after experiencing loss (the ‘negative spaces’ referred to in the piece) will illuminate and inform my own. This then is the beginning of a project which I anticipate will be told, as my piece concludes, ‘from many angles, in many forms… re-covered and re-corded.’ The multiple perspectives are informed by feminisms’ throwing off of the shackles of binary opposition, of refusing to conform to imposed, dominant structures, especially since they tend only serve to restrict growth and expression.
References
Les Back and Michael Bull (2016) The Auditory Culture Reader, 2nd Edition, Bloomsbury, London.
Otto Friedrich Bollnow (2011) [1963] Human Space, Hyphen Press, London.