Continuing the live performance series as part of their CO(VID) residency, George Saxon and Ryan Sehmar  – working under the moniker of Spect. Anon –  have developed a fourth online live event, ‘EAR(th) WORMS’. This new performance work is an exploration of auditory hallucinations, playing with layers of reality and temporality.

“Descending into an ecstasy of cryptic ramblings that avoid positions in the outside (real) world, but give clues to the earworms that stick in our heads. A re-imagined world, where the old world (before the pandemic), continues to invade and intrude as we continue to shield”.

Within the aerial view of the camera frame the performing bodies move within and around the edges of the framed perimeter, responding to a gameplay of recited sound loops, drifts of conversation and earthy gestures. The performers vocalisations and bodily responses attempt to capture fragments of audio as they pass over the time of recorded duration.

Throughout the performance an intermittent gain and loss of control intersects. The performers  respond to each other with banter,  ideas are formulated and hysteria ensues. They emerge in a trance-like hyper-state, where the tragic, the hilarious and the anarchic are evoked, collapsing and distorting the auditory ‘worms’ (recordings through earphones) that serve as the foundation for the piece.

Gradually, the space becomes an echo chamber, with words, songs and noises merging together to create new narratives forms, where past dreams, broken stories, the real and the imagined are revealed within the territory of a splendid self-isolation. Games of chance and disruptive vocalisations surrender to sonic rapture.

EAR(th) WORMS is performed live on instagram at 4pm, Sunday 25 April 2021  here

Performance duration: 30 minutes