I am Digging to the Other Side of the Earth: A Series of Microscopic Epistolaries, 2025
Full HD video, duration: 15m
In grief, the microscope becomes a tool of imaginative inquiry into the unseen, the unknowable. My blood. Cells from my cheeks. My red hair. His grave soil. His handwritten letters. His glasses. These are all material remnants left behind by my father’s existence, which I explore microscopically, amassing a series of poetic experiments that trace what remains of him in the living world.
With a Focused Ion Beam, I mill lines of his handwritten poetry into individual strands of my hair.
On a single grain of soil taken from his grave, I engrave a sound wave of both of our voices singing the same song.
I introduce a drop of crystalline liquid to his grave soil and watch as worlds collide.
I would like to wholeheartedly thank Valerie Brogden, without whose microscopic expertise and generous collaboration with the FIB I could never have completed this project. Diolch yn fawr Valerie!