Seagate: The Sea in My Elbow

1996-98

30 h x 40 w x 40 d cm

Patinated bronze, painted MDF base and media player

1 minute 23 seconds looped SD digital file

Camera: Hildegard Spiegelhofer

Editor: Liliane Lijn with Michael Franks

Seagate is the name of a gated community near Coney Island where, with her mother and grandmother, Lijn spent the first year of her life. Lijn’s elbow houses the voices of memory: the sea, her breath and her mother’s voice.

“In the birth process there is the major change from not breathing to breathing… It is likely that for the infant who is just born it is the breathing of the mother that is meaningful…”

D W Winnicott, ‘Human Nature’

Photos: Stephen Weiss