Echoes of Care

2025 — 38th annual transmediale, Berlin

Oh daughter, go you in peace and do the works required of you, so that you will have rest and comfort from your enemies and that they will have not the power to harm you and lower you in the sight of your people and belittle you in the sight of your friends. — excerpt from Mules and Men (1935), Zora Neale Hurston

Echoes of Care is a collaborative multidisciplinary performance exploring the theme of haunting and Black ways of care and exploring the body as a vehicle for epiginetic memory of carelessness and carefulness. Playing physically with the concept of closeness (of those performing) and proximity (to the audience who remain peripheral), the performance, considers the sound of careFULness and careLESSness and how that sound might echo through our bones, memories, and beyond.

Combining sound (a performative sound piece by Liz Gre), voice (a performative eulogy by Kwame Phillips), movement (a dance performance by Rebecca Pokua Korang), and intervention (a sonic and gestural call and response by SA Smythe), the piece creates a resonant space of care and vulnerability amidst the layered temporalities of living in a racialized world.

This event was part of a cooperation between transmediale and the Critical Infrastructures and Image Politics research group (CIIP), supported by the Winchester School of Arts, University of Southampton.

“Echoes of Care” (2025), multimedia performance
EoC Collective: echoesofcare.net
Gre – sound composition, lead vocal performance, altar installation
Kwame Phillips – performative eulogy, bass, altar installation
SA Smythe – composition libretto, soprano, altar installation
Rebecca Korang – choreography, soprano/alto, altar installation
Photo credits: Laura Fiori for transmediale e.V.