Where I Heard Your Voice

Somayeh Khakshoor's MFA Defence
Friday, November 5, 2021 | 11:00 AM | Zoom
RSVP to sca_gpa@sfu.ca

Where I Heard Your Voice is an experiment in recasting time as space. The photos of this back-projected photo-collage have been juxtaposed by means of a moving-image approach so that time can be perceived not in a linear manner, but through an infinite number of coexisting, multidirectional paths of undetermined lengths. This medium allows for the creation of “smooth/nomadic” spaces—as described in Deleuze and Guattari’s elaborations on nomadology—for the wandering eye of the viewer.

Where I Heard Your Voice is the result of a collaboration/dialogue with a ravine and its myriad inhabitants, including non-human and human traces. The photos have been taken during countless walks in a ravine currently known as Renfrew Ravine. The ravine is located in the traditional territories of the xʷmə𝜃kʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations and it is part of the Still Creek Watershed which enters the qiqéyt (Qayqayt) Nation territories and is traditionally a shared harvesting and gathering place for all four of these Nations.

Keywords: photo-collage; montage; back-projection; nomadology; nomadic art; colonialism; indigenous land claims; unceded territories; immigration.