Review: [something's happening] – 12.10.22

AVAILABLE ON OTOROKU.

“This…thing…that…this…” says Iris Colomb. Patiently, spaciously. So commences an furling of phrases, set adrift from the particulars of names and objects and reference points – “absorbed by”, “gaining distance”, “how much”, “this need”, “divided” – which gather into a lattice of in-betweens, tracing translucent forms in the mind’s eye, vessels awaiting colour and shape. They recur, or tumble into delays and glitches. Repetition only hardens the ambiguity. Daryl Worthington mimics this process through loops of plucking and chiming strings, gaining density but resisting coherence, like indecipherable mobiles of thread and thin torn card. And then Colomb says, “its own opposite” – perhaps a remark on the beautiful impotence of language, which has the ability to fold in on itself, describing the thing and precisely not the thing. The duo are aware of these hazards and stay instead within a zone of material nascency, in the knowledge that specifics only complicate things, only dilute the thing. Worthington’s plucks remain suggestive, Colomb’s utterances wide open.

In the second half we finally get an object and a place. “Stones underwater”. If one pulls together some of these phrases, they start to resemble an observation journal: “only a very small glimpse”, “they are very fragile”, “recordings might be better”, “they don’t have that connection”. A marine geologist? There is a tapping. Something drops onto a table – something hard. Then a chime. A tape player lets loose a ribbon of tinkling, warbling piano keys and then stops. “Collecting” says Colomb, as Worthington moves through a fidgeting scrutiny of various physical materials. They gather. With no shapely specifics forthcoming, I start to seek coherence for myself, beyond the fact that these sounds occupy neighbouring points in time. “Making maps” says Colomb, observing me now, as synthesisers first fizz in diagonal lines, then splay over the guitar strings like marbles. Suddenly we’re back where we started: “things”, “this”, the electronics busier and dizzier, as the duo stagger in circles of captivating non-specifics, no further emerged.