Martina Copley and Michaela Zuge-Bruton, At dawn the image rings a dissonant tune that is inaudible to our ears and cannot be recalled, 2014. Single-channel video, sound, 19:55min. 283 colour page book, Ed. of 12, open 19 x 22cm, closed 19 x 11 x 2cm

At dawn the image rings a dissonant tune that is inaudible to our ears and cannot be recalled brought the work of Martina Copley and Michaela Zuge-Bruton into a quasi state-of-attunement where all that is untellable was entangled in their attempts to recall the sound of a dream. A publication assembled from the individual artist’s pages (283p, colour, ed.12) was exhibited as an hermetic stack wrapped in plastic alongside a video of the book being ‘read’ or ‘played’ by the artists (HD video, sound, 19min 55sec). With multiple sets of headphones, the work could be viewed by six readers and listeners simultaneously.

At dawn the image rings a dissonant tune that is inaudible to our ears and cannot be recalled seeks the circular impossibility of an account. In the retelling of dreams what remains distant and essentially closed comes to the surface. In this contested terrain language becomes material. Through recitation the artists considered what is lost or resistant in processes of translation and how information is encountered in unexpected ways. By gathering and disseminating sourced linguistic and filmic material, both artists worked to find the poetic within language’s closed systems and behavioural codes.