‘A Sphere Of Water Orbiting A Star’, conceived by The Otolith Group in collaboration with sound designer and composer Tyler Friedman for Galway Arts Centre, features unreleased recordings of conversations between Gerald Donald of Detroit Techno duo Drexciya and Kodwo Eshun, along with films made in Galway at the mouth of the River Corrib as it enters the Atlantic Ocean.
‘A Sphere Of Water Orbiting A Star’ is an immersive audio visual environment and is Part ll of Hydra Decapita made in 2010. Conceived as a guide to the imagination the installation rotates by exploring a liquid world orbiting a binary star system through the sonic portal of Drexciya.
"I liked how the blue transparencies in the window downstairs gave the impression of being underwater, ascending the stairs then felt like going on the deck of a ship at night to look into space. This three roomed area contained their new video work, A Sphere of Water Orbiting a Star (2023, 35 mins), which gives the show its title. The narration in this film again comes from the same recorded interview/conversation between Eshun and Donald for Hydra Decapita so there was a certain amount of overlap in places or else the two dialogues were beginning to merge for me. This film was more about the process of how Drexciya created their own concepts and mythology, what Eshun has called in the past a sonic fiction. The Otolith Group themselves describe the film as a guide to the imagination of this normally closed world. To do this Donald is asked to free associate to Drexciya titles such as ‘Beyond The Abyss’, ‘Aqua Worm Hole’ and ‘ Mission to Ociya Syndor and Back’.
For each one he begins by explaining the title and then theorises how this might work and goes quite deep into each concept. He is also asked to respond to the text in their final album Grava 4 (2002). This leads to a dialogue about the Drexciya dimension being closed and for me and those who know (or think they know) there was an unexpected emotional punch. He doesn’t have to mention it but this would be due to the death of James Stinson and Donald is asked whether this dimension might ever be reopened. Instead of admitting the impossibility of a return from death, he appears to open the possibility of the return of a loved one by saying that if enough energy was applied this dimension could be reopened but admits that the amount required would probably be far too great for us to produce and harness for such a purpose.
One of the free associations led him to theorise about a hydrosphere and he imagines a huge planet size sphere of water orbiting a Drexciyan star and how it could be contained in a vessel and travel through space. It’s this that gives the film and show its title. The second video screen in this space with the beautiful and quite Tarkovskyesque b&w and highly contrasted footage of the surface water from the mouth of the River Corrib seems to represent glimpses of this water world."
Stephen Rennicks
Multichannel audio, HD Video, Posters, Graphics.
