Live music performance for Think Tank x Plantlife, Belgrave music hall, Leeds. 26-1-20
Broadcast on NTS 31-1-20
www.nts.live/shows/aboutface/episodes/aboutface-31st-january-2020
All live instrumentation and electronics by Aboutface.
Passages of Ovid's Metamorphoses recided by Jenna Whelan
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.
released January 30, 2020
Aboutface - Flute, Guitar, Synths/Electronics
Jenna Whelan - Voice