LT
Leslie Deere is a Postdoctoral Researcher at London’s Guildhall conservatoire and a multidisciplinary artist specialising in audiovisual installations, immersive environments, and embodied extended-reality performance. Her research explores how emerging technologies enhance artistic expression, altered-states and wellbeing, with work exhibited internationally at venues including MoMA PS1, BFI London and CCA Glasgow, and featuring in both public and private collections.
At Sodas 2123 residency Leslie will be working on The Faulkner VR project that explores connections between Lithuanian cultural heritage and the American deep south through William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury and its Lithuanian translation by Violeta Tauragienė. The collaborative project embraces artistic risks to deconstruct and reimagine both texts through immersive audio ecologies that capture the linguistic, imaginary, and cultural elements they depict and provoke. These soundscapes incorporate what was stored inside the klojimas (barns), the associated labor performed there and particularly the sutartinės – Lithuanian polyphonic music performed by female singers whose name derives from ‘sutarti’ meaning ‘to be in concordance.’
The activities of SODAS 2123 are financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius city municipality.