TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

For our artist talk, we are proposing to present our research and creative process in the making of “Tears for Lost Frequencies.”

“Tears for Lost Frequencies” explores our complex relationship with plastic through the act of improvisation. Our intention is to highlight plastic as a matter that cannot be separated from the “natural”: a material everywhere and becoming our “nature” and our “uninvited” collaborator. In “Tears for Lost Frequencies,” microplastics found in tears become material witnesses to the experience of one’s grieving moment, such as hearing loss, and a speculative space for plastic healing. 

During Fall 2023, while artists-in-residence at LMCC at Governors Island, we collected microplastics from the surrounding waters using ethical and open-source tools provided by CLEAR Lab for plastic pollution research. Through the process of getting closer to these samples through microscopes, close-up cameras, and large-scale video projection, we began to look deeper into our own connection, to see if we carry microplastics in our most intimate moments of relating to the world. In Oct. 2023 at Nature Lab in Troy, we began to look for microplastics in our tears and sweat. From our microplastic findings, we created an audiovisual performance and video titled  “Tears for Lost Frequencies”. 

“Tears for Lost Frequencies” is based on queer ecologies which question the sterilized narratives that are built around understandings of “nature” and reveal the entangled relations between humans and more-than-human entities through eroticism, kinship, and care.