Mammal Mammilla Mamma
(2025)
author(s): Lotus Rosalina Hebbing
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023.
BA Photography.
Mammal, a vertebrate animal that was nourished with the milk from the mother when it were young.
Mammilla, nipple of the mammal.
Mamma, where are you.
At the age of twenty, Lotus Rosalina Hebbing had always lived in the city until an unannounced occasion occurred and her parents bought an old farm in the northern part of the Netherlands. There were gargantuan fields embosoming the house. On her visits, Lotus obtained a curiosity for witnessing the growth of crops, but also the demise of the beasts. It couldn’t be coincidental; the amount of times she encountered a dying critter. It fascinated her how she felt identically fallen out of control as the birds that smashed against the windows; an unwillingly lonesome surrender to the external. The carcasses became her comrades and if their bones were to defy the decay, she could find solace in the fecundity of the plains and revive from the objectifications that were pasted onto her by the hum of the city.
A few years later, a collection was made from the occurrences on these acres and contorted to the tale that is bound to fall out of tune. It follows a character known as ‘She’. It has been a long time since She tasted the comfort of her mama’s milk. Attempts of holding onto her childhood were only futile and so She decided to flee to a farm at the end of the world, with the persisting premonition to come near that same milk again. On her expedition to a substitute for alleviation, She encounters sweltering saps, suck stoppers and restless traps. Her observations enjoy fleshly connotations. The head does no longer bother to keep secrets, just like life isn’t hidden on these flatlands.
On her adventures, She invents lullabies that her disappearing mother could have sung to her. There is a suggestion of ambivalence in these songs. Their essence is to lull the awake to distant lands of sleep, but it interprets as a damaged dream. The traces lead back to scapes of sorrow where a melancholic melody alarms what was lost along the way and led to inevitable incompleteness.
A sweet sadness covers the blankets that await. The repeating rocking motion of the lullaby reminds of the tender arms that once were wrapped around her, now forever twisted out of shape.
Fantasized folklore, hysteric nostalgia and shriveled youth meet in the remnants of a music box. The work is making a plea to leave the modern cities, where objectification by surrounding eyes constantly influence the development of the teenage persona, and find consolation in remote lands to discover limitlessly the territories of the self.
10 - 10 - 10 Edgelands:
(2024)
author(s): O'Brien & O'Brien
published in: Research Catalogue
Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, critical animal studies and ecology, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the ‘walkies’ as a co-authored act of ‘making’ or ‘performing’ together.
As part of the practice based element of my PhD thesis, Deep Canine Topography, 10 - 10 - 10 Edge-lands, is a further investigation of the methodologies of Deep Canine Topography (O'Brien & O'Brien 2018). This series operates as a visual and sonic essay for each walk and explores memory, deep topographical imprints, and entropy between wild and post-industrial spaces and sub-urban sprawl, on the edge of the city of Leicester and the county of Leicestershire. During the 2020 Covid 19 pandemic lockdown, as part of permitted exercise, we undertook 10 Walks, of up to 10 miles, within a 10 mile circle of our home, just outside of the city centre. Covid 19 restrictions, remained in place in Leicester longer than in any other UK city or region.
Each title will take you to a different walk.
Click return to return to the title page.
Click Base Map to open a GoogleMap of the walk locations and GPS tracklogs (in a new window).
Clicking on the round MAP circle, on the title page, will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.
Further Adventures in Deep Canine Topography: Experiments in canine Soundscapes: Attending to Rhythm and Repetition.
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): O'Brien and O'Brien
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, critical animal studies and ecology, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the ‘walkies’ as a co-authored act of ‘making’ or ‘performing’ together.
As part of the practice based element of my PhD thesis, Deep Canine Topography, this practice based investigation of the performance of human-canine hybrid aesthetic walking practices, focuses on the rhythm and repetition of the urban walkies through Henri Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis. Using sound, photography and GPS to document the daily repetitive morning walk, in urban Leicester, this presentation explores two such walks, one taken in January 2020, the other in March 2020, during the Covid 19 lockdown period. Both walks follow the same circular route. Both attend to the rhythms of the human-canine bodies, traffic, human conversation and canine olfactory signs and signifiers, exploring harmony and disharmony between the linear rhythms of production and more messy rhythms of nature. Binaural microphones are positioned close to the canine body to capture a soundscape from the canine perspective. Duration of both walks is around 13 minutes. Headphones are advised for a full spatial experience.
The sound will autorun on opening the exposition.
PLEASE WEAR HEADPHONES:
First presented at the Midlands 4 Cities, ARHC, Research Festival: July 13th_14th 2020:
Clicking on the round MAP circle will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.