Vestiges of Affective Resonance

Daniel Bacchus presents two pieces of virtual reality work produced in collaboration with Ukrainian and Gulag survivor, Ivanna Masczcak. ‘I Look For Them’ is a non-linear VR experience that engages with Ivanna’s memories as she recalls being transported across Russia and Siberia to the coastal Gulag camp at Magadan in 1949. The participant is invited to journey with Ivanna into the intangible territory where the possibility of a connection between self and other, separated by time and history, resides. Addressing the same subject matter, ‘Be That Ocean’ immerses the participant in a dynamic, layered virtual landscape, experimenting with the unique affordances of VR to invite an immanent, embodied, affective resonance with the experience of another. The projects consider the various ways of being in virtual space and how VR may be used to create spaces of affective relationality with another’s experiences. Patrick Wichert shows his latest photographs produced on a field trip to Poland and the Baltic Sea. This work follows oral history accounts of forced migration in January 1945 from the former East Prussia to then Western Germany. This project is part of a wider investigation into the communication of affect in landscape photography, in this case following a traumatic and sudden uprooting during conflict close to the end of the 2nd WW. The research combines photographic walking practice with the study of historical archives and research in modes of haptic display of visual narratives. It investigates how landscape photographs communicate those memories carried across generations which are ‘imprinted’ in the people’s sub-conscious as well as their mind. The exhibition aims to navigate between the ghosts of a haunting memory and active recollections of events which occurred on those lands, yet which are now barely visible.