LA A DYBIRD
the ache was keeping me awake, I would drift in and out of the radio, podcasts, dreams, I’d be holding onto something resembling a solid metal fence and it would bend like it was tin foil and I was seconds away from falling...
La a dybird. She is thinking about Echo—she is tracing her body. Recording sounds and images: Ladybird by Eileen Agar, a self-portrait by Gwen John, and the cover of the Slits album Cut—women naked; picking up on a landscape, a drawing, a memory of a live performance; sound and sounds, silence and clicks. Eileen Agar is haunting her and the Slits brush past her. She follows Gwen John’s pencil line, insistently, rhythmically, through her Parisian bedroom, into K’s brother’s bedroom, while J holds down the button, loops the sound, and shimmering pink and blue graphics sweep in, fade out, breathing across the branches of a tree, daubed on her body. Dictaphone on.
Rachel Cattle’s on-going project, The Continuous Broadcast, is an exploration of intuitive and improvisational approaches to writing, drawing, and sound—broadcast, performed, and exhibited. She was a member of sound collective BxNT, and is currently part of We Are Publication, a collaborative research group at Kingston University. Recent publications include Witch Dance, published by The Centre for Useless Splendour in 2017.
