Echo (and diffraction)
Carolyn McKenzie-Craig, Visual Art
A methodology of echo and diffraction could be seen as a feminist act that decentres from vocality to a distributed rhythm that moves inside, over and within other objects -bodies and forms. In this space the reverb of other actions – nuances -movements and breathes is re-constituted via the body and extended outwards to generate new dialogic formations. These forms remain tethered to the origin text/sound/action but gain connection and complexity via waves of diffraction and intra-action. (Barad)
Echo as acoustimatric offers a transitive access point to a doubling or diffusing of the subject herself. This doubling gives agency to perform within the subject’s interiority – to hear the outside reverb back within the interior spaces of the body via reflection and sense its own spectral shadow. The acoustic wave disperses movement into rhythm and flesh via sonic remains, enunciating multiple temporalities from the movements of one body.
Echo as vibration considers the body and its relational vibrations to objects – other discourses and histories to consider how to enact via affectual movement = a latent space of potential becoming and unbecoming.
Echo as a depth seeking device measures the undercurrent of matter – both the flesh and the structures of support that surround. In this way depth is ‘Fathomed’ – locating knowledge via a sensory apparatus. It penetrates the water – flesh- and stone to sense proximity – or to un-sense. Echo within this frame offers a sensing out and a return of sensory input in a new form.
Echo as vocality: Anne Carson’s has stated that ‘putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day’ and that the figure of echo has for too long encapsulated that negation of vocality. The opening of Carson’s door to the female subject is thus a deeply oceanic act. One that floods the reverberative capacities of repetition into the kind of Différance that Derrida defines as:
The ‘systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other. This spacing is the simultaneously active and passive.’ (1)
In this reading Echo encapsulates both the agency and obligarchy of our contemporary image – text – body exchange matrix. By holding onto the spectrality of echo herself we can reframe movements and acts via their social reflections.
1. Derrida, J. (1982). Positions. Trans. Allan Bass. University of Chicago Press. p.27