Makiko Yamamoto

Hello, I am George it’s me.
Makiko is my collaborator in this work “Ego as Echo”. She challenges me to take over my existence. Just to let you know I am not her inner voice or echo. She says things like “I am not a subject, the more I speak more I become echo.” So I am here to fill the gap for her, the gap between voice and voicing and the space between eyes and ears. One thing I/we found interesting was the McGurk effect. I am operating the sound and Makiko is operating the vision. As I am unbodied presence, I seem to help Makiko vanish herself using her appearance.

“The McGurk effect demonstrates how ready we are to hear something that we think ought to be there, but is not. The striking thing about the McGurk effect is that, no matter how many times one sees or hears it in action it does not seem possible to countermand the brain’s determination to conjure a sound that is not there to correspond with the speech movements that are.” Steven Connor, Panophonia

Makiko Yamamoto’s performance of awkwardness exposes the vulnerabilities of the social and ideological codes underlying spoken language, communication and understanding.

Documentation