Star Chamber. Susanna Davies-Crook

About

Susanna Davies-Crook (b.1985, London) is an artist and writer with a background in theatre. Speaking through multiple bodies, both live and recorded, the exhibition is a system of voices that points toward an absent body held invisible in stasis. The convening of rhetorical speech and slippery emblems within the gallery considers the summons of Habeas Corpus, translating as “you shall have the body”. The consultation of bodies and behaviours for the extraction of qualitative data have been examined via a series of workshops that employ the methodologies of juries, military decision-making protocols, marketing focus groups, theatrical rehearsals and character development exercises. The Latinate voices of Justice and administration preside over the architecture of the gallery, implicating the live body in a feedback loop of received ideas.

Davies-Crook has employed ‘interlocutors’ to mediate the research material and subject matter toward an ‘outcome’. These include a digital animation made in dialogue with Joey Holder, a text reflecting on the body as an island by Emily Beber, a text produced with rhetorician James Cullen (Speech Writer’s Guild), video footage of the workshops filmed by Danny Nellis  (Video In Common), rehearsing with actors Kristina Epenetos and Tom Ross Williams, a voice-over recorded with Ruth Clarke-Irons, a written response from critic Lizzie Homersham and a live response from author Sally O’Reilly as part of the closing event.