Conjuring 召唤

33EMYBW & Joey Holder

On her third album, Holes Of Sinian, Shanghai artist and SVBKVLT stalwart 33EMYBW seeks to understand evolution from a non-human perspective. Looking to extinct species, 33 focused on lifeforms able to live and die without entering into cycles of hunting and gathering, or violence and consumption, taking particular inspiration from the biota of the Ediacaran Period, roughly 635-541 million years ago. Ediacaran biota exist by means of absorption, utilising microbial mats to absorb nutrients from their surroundings. In a gesture of speculative world building, 33 maps these biota into the present day, excavating through sound a habitat for these creatures to thrive in, allowing them to linger outside of time.

These are the holes of the album’s title, holes in space and time through which 33’s biota can wriggle, creatures caught outside of time that drew artist Joey Holder to the project. “A lot of our interests converge around the importance of de-centering humans, and focusing more on non-human creatures, known and unknown, from past and present,” Holder explains of the video for Conjuring 召唤, adapted from the artists’ live AV performance comissioned by Unsound Festival and Illuminate Festival. “The creature concept came from a sketch from 33, which I see as a kind of multi-headed ‘cryptid’, a being which has been made-up, but also may have existed at some point.”

“Clips of the creature have been mixed with footage of scientific modelling of DNA and microscopic aquatic creatures, mainly copepods which are found in almost all bodies of water and are of great importance to the whole of the food chain and carbon capture,” Holder continues. “It represents an ever evolving organism, displaying traits of mimicry, alchemy, adaptation and camouflage.” This is exactly what we bear witness to, in microscopic detail, in Holder’s visual, organic twitches and spasms picked out in 33’s restless percussion and hiccuping vocals.