Over Yonder Horror

Over Yonder Horror

Earlid | Over Yonder Horror, fall 2016

Art of the woundspace and, in particular, artistry absorbed through the ear, offers an intimacy that allows for more compassion than the addictive pull to witnessing it moment-by-last-gasping-moment because someone had the temerity to film it on their phone.

Two artistic approaches gesture our ears to conjure faraway brutal realities via the ears instead of the eyes. One studies the wounds obliquely through a fierce song-like voicing; the other is a kind of sober transcript of uncertainty. This artistry gives us ample expanse to think about others’ pain rather than move to another viral video dosage of daily horror, to cringe or to sob.

More ‘theatrical,’ Gregory Whitehead’s On the Shore Dimly Seen sings a libretto of a day’s worth of interrogation at Guantanamo. Equally intimate is radio producer/writer Scott Carrier’s work channeling the voices of refugees he encounters crossing the inky sea as he rides with them from Lesbos to Athens overnight.

Whitehead offered an expansion of his artistic process with an initial question about bearing witness and how art manages to reveal more than a reality tour through the heinous. A full transcript of our conversation can be read; visit Dialogues for detail.