How can using insects in artwork be harnessed to surface ethical grey areas through lecture-performance? In the three channel projection installation Distilled Dissonance: the species known & other beings, I use a Zoom meeting presentation to critique and discuss two of my own moving image artworks Played as they lay and Keaton Fly, after Gordon, both of which utilise insects as actors. To illustrate my line of questioning, I blend poor quality clips shot on my phone with high-definition footage, mixed with disparate low quality, found scenes to unpack the new-found dilemmas; creating an amalgamation of aesthetics to personify my conflicted philosophical stance.
Heightening my awareness of my own cognitive dissonance surfaced by these fallen creatures—the fact that I am uneasy about using insects as material yet can justify my actions as commonplace activities—is how I arrived at the concept of “cross-dissonance,” a theory of living consciousness; a framework and tool to discuss the artwork from outside and within. By mimicking the dialect of an institutionalised art academy, I attempt to fuse psychoanalysis with art theory to frame the communication process as the artwork itself.
