DINAH AND MOLLY MULLEN – ECHO
This project will broadcast on AFM Wednesday 19 March, 1930NZST, and on 87.9 FM in Glasgow, Scotland, during Radiophrenia (7 - 20 April, 2025).
We encourage you to choose a listening spot that has a view of a rocky or stony landscape. If this isn’t possible we suggest you select and hold a stone while listening.
A sonic cyber-mystery set during the pandemic lockdown. Two sisters, on opposite sides of the world, start an online creative project together inspired by the myth of Echo, only to realise that, perhaps, Echo still has something she wants to say.
Slipping between fact and fiction, between human and non-human voices, Echo is a two-part audio story that takes us back to the claustrophobic confines of our web cams, homes, and closed national borders. From such constrained beginnings it expands outward into a sonic cyber-mystery revealing a world formed by mythology, geology, artificial intelligence and cyberfeminism.
Picking up where the Greek and Roman myth-versions leave Echo, these two pieces of sonic storytelling suggest she has long inhabited the rock beneath the earth’s surface, causing earthquakes, volcanoes and provoking continental shift in her grief, trauma and rage. Over the last two centuries, earthly elements have been built into the fabric of human technologies, giving Echo a whole new domain for expression and action.
In each audio piece, a semi-fictionalised narrative unfolds, of one sister trying to connect and collaborate with another sister during a COVID-19 lockdown, each gradually becoming entangled with Echo’s fate. These sister sound works explore questions of how to connect and collaborate when separated, the ambiguous role of digital technologies in collaborative processes and the roles of place and materials as active, creative collaborators.
On the five year anniversary of New Zealand’s border closure Echo is being presented for the first time streaming on AFM at 7:30 pm NZST on March 19 2025 and broadcasting at 87.9 FM in Glasgow as part of the Radiophrenia Festival 7 - 20 April 2025.
Audiences are invited to, yet again, gather together-apart, and listen to the unfolding stories.
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Echo has received support from Arts Council England, West of England Cultural Authority and the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland.
More infomation: https://www.dinahmullen.com/echo