Cara Tolmie
My friends could sit upon my breath and I would move, really slow
2020
HD Video, 11 min
The video work My friends could sit upon my breath and I would move, really slow was shot in the artist’s home over a number of months whilst recovering from post-concussion syndrome during the Winter of 2017-18. Her domestic interior becomes the scene of a series of detailed observations, filtered through the convalescent stare of a body whose sensorial awareness and capacity for attention is massively heightened due to injury. Each image in turn is discovered through its contact with music. Records on vinyl continuously play into the home throughout the video, allowing an intimate and bodily kind of listening to direct the attention of the lens. The work contains sections of the albums – Birds of a Feather by Spontaneous Music Ensemble (1971), Wait Til Night’ by Cooly G (2014), The World’s Greatest Singer by Bessie Smith (1970), Voice is the Original Instrument by Joan La Barbara (1976) and L’incendie by Brigitte Fontaine and Areski (1974).
