by Pip Adam
published 21 September 2023
‘It would be better if we took a moment to be really grateful for this beautiful spacecraft which used to be so perfect for us. Which was built especially for us. When we got too big for Earth.’
The spaceship Audition is hurtling towards an event horizon. Squashed immobile into its rooms are three giants: Alba, Stanley, and Drew. If they talk, the spaceship keeps moving; if they are silent, they resume growing.
So they talk, and as they do, Alba, Stanley, and Drew recover shared memories of the injustices faced back on Earth by their former selves. Or are they constructing those selves from memory-scripts that have been implanted in them?
At once speculative and grimly realistic, formally experimental and politically urgent, Audition asks how we live with each other’s violences, and what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much space.