A Heap of Broken Images (A Game of Telephone With Footnotes)
The first section of T.S. Eliot's poem The Wasteland, titled “Burial of the Dead” was given to volunteers who generated audio tracks, personal recollections that they felt related to the text. These audio tracks were mixed down to create the “murmuring” sound track inside of a 21’ x 6’ x 9’ wooden covered bridge sculpture. Two videos loop from backlit windows. The video content is sourced from images and impressions conveyed in the audio tracks. The covered bridge and its loamy floor was my personal response to my impression of the atmosphere of the poem. A telephone booth sits at the back of the bridge and acts as a receiving station, allowing participants to leave their memories using the telephone apparatus. In case a participant does not want to leave a message in the phone booth, they can tear out a page from the “phone book” which has a copy of the poem and instructions for recording or writing a response to the poem. Each participant is linked back to the original T.S. Eliot material. In a sense I am expanding the footnote section that is voluminous. Like a game of “telephone”, the original material is transformed through the viewpoint of each participant and expands the cultural reach of the poem.
Photography by Finger Photography.