Leaving Mojave

This project originated during Susannah’s residency as Bank Street Arts where she met poet Fay Musselwhite, also a BSA resident. The two created GBAOJ and performed the work live at the Sheffield Poetry Festival in 2011. Initially this work consisted of 4 poems with audio visual accompaniment and a short documentary film. For the Off the Shelf Festival later that year, Linda Lee Welch and the Only Micheal were invited to respond to the work and create a second act. Linda Lee wrote 4 poems and a song which is performed with Fay, all with music from Michael. Susannah created background visuals. All the pieces created for GBAOJ are in the process of becoming short films, of which ‘Leaving Mojave, featuring Linda Lee is the first to be completed. The content of the project has developed out of Susannah’s long term research interest in the Uncanny. Studying ‘abjection’ as a related emotional and psychological state, Susannah used taxidermy to explore the public’s response to dead flesh. The original installation work entitled ‘Goat Boy’ was a small person with the preserved head of a red deer sourced from an abattoir. This work was intended to produce feelings of abjection but also incongruous humour, which could draw a parallel with the uncanny sensation. Both suggest, along with the incongruity theory of humour, that cognitive dissonance may be a factor in how these emotional states are expressed. ‘Leaving Mojave’ has also provoked research in two other areas. Firstly the challenge of creating video work to accompany live performance highlights the distracting and engaging nature of the moving image. Secondly the use of CGI in the video work illustrates the attention commanded by this type of imagery. We have only recently been able to see imagery of this artificial nature. This ‘not of the world’ state could again be seen in terms of creating cognitive dissonance.