And Laid Him On The Green

And Laid Him On the Green
Director and Visual Artist, Ryat Yezbick
Audio Design and Live Ensemble Instructor, James Rushford
2019
Curated by Joel Stern for Octopus 19: Ventriloquy at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne Performed at Meat Market Stables with live vocals by Sage Pbbbt, Kate Brown, Carolyn Connors and Jenny Barnes

The work is an experiment in misheard, barely-caught, and residual moments occurring at the intersection of technical capture and human interpretation. - Joel Stern

And Laid Him On The Green is a 40-minute multimedia performance incorporating four live voices, text, electronics and three-channel video, exploring cultural examples of ‘mishearings’, from the innocuous to the injurious. The work is the first major collaboration between Melbourne-based experimental musician James Rushford and Los Angeles-based visual artist Ryat Yezbick. Rushford and Yezbick re-enact a conversation between Yezbick and forensic audio specialist, Susan Wilson as they explore cognitive perception at play around misheard speech and the distrust of Voice ID in court rooms. Through a combination of live mediums, Rushford and Yezbick look at the performance of morality at play in the pursuit of truth. The work premiered at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, in a group exhibition on ventriloquism titled Octopus 19: Ventriloquy, curated by Joel Stern. Funding was provided by the Australian Council for the Arts and Liquid Architecture.

photography by Keelan O’Hehir

RYAT ˈrī-ət