pre cocoon
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Pre Cocoon—spatial sound and architectural installation
"-- the state before the cocoon,
the waiting process for the formation of the embryo of a new life form,
life before the new birth."
Pre Cocoon by the previously Berlin-based and currently Vermont-based artist Menghan Wang in collaboration with visual artist and musician Scott Mou is a spatial sound and architectural installation that reflects the idea of creating shelters in turbulence. The work was created and exhibited at Otis Mountain Get Down from September 8th to 10th during Menghan’s residency at makerspace Generator in the summer of 2023.
A shelter is a place for survival when one’s original home is no longer safe, and it is often meant to be used temporarily. But what if one’s original home is gone? What if all that was left was the memory of a past place that no longer exists? What if the intended temporary state of living is not temporary?
The work reflects these questions while creating an environment for contemplation, peace, and transformation—a series of half-opened white shelters stand as symbols of homes in their transitional states, while the sound dissolves static forms into a state of openness and forwardness for possibilities that are meant to be discovered.
The shelters were designed and built during the artists’ week-long camping on the installation site in the mountain valley, far removed from cell phone signals, and refined after a rigorous test in a heavy rainstorm. The shelters eventually found support from the surrounding trees and their interconnected orientation, creating a communal space within the embrace of nature. They symbolize and offer transient sanctuaries for lives undergoing transformation – a refuge for receding past experiences and the emergence of new beginnings; the spatial sound environment interweaves, affirms, and eventually settles the complex emotions that can arise in times of uncertainty, as the sound swirls around the installation area and caresses the listeners in a warm and meditative simplicity.
Photos and videos by Scott Mou and Menghan Wang.
Pre Cocoon was made possible with:
Otis Mountain Get Down, Elizabethtown NY
Generator, Burlington VT
and the kind support from:
Herrie Son
Zachary Allott
Ryan Forde
Quillan George
and many others from the Otis team
September 8-10, 2023