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The 2008 Absa l’Atelier prize was awarded to James Webb for Auto Hagiography. Engaging with Webb’s interest in the psychological impact of sound, the chaise longue is fitted with speakers playing recordings of hours of past-life hypnotic regression that the artist underwent. The recordings are only audible when one reclines, as though participating in psychoanalysis oneself. Webb calls it a “supernatural, sonic self-portrait”.
The 2008 Absa l’Atelier prize was awarded to James Webb for Auto Hagiography. Engaging with Webb’s interest in the psychological impact of sound, the chaise longue is fitted with speakers playing recordings of hours of past-life hypnotic regression that the artist underwent. The recordings are only audible when one reclines, as though participating in psychoanalysis oneself. Webb calls it a “supernatural, sonic self-portrait”.
