Speculating on the ways in which modes of communication are mitigated through social and ever-shifting metrics, this new commission by the Gadigal/Sydney-based artist and dancer Amrita Hepi, Scripture for a smoke screen: Episode 1 – dolphin house, expands Hepi’s enquiry into language, desire and representation.

Scripture for a smoke screen: Episode 1 – dolphin house takes Dr John Lilly and Margaret Lovatt’s 1963 NASA-funded dolphin house experiment as its point of departure. Over a period of two years, Lilly and Lovatt attempted to prove that human language could be mimicked by dolphins. NASA’s interest in the outcome reflected their efforts to prepare for the anticipated contact with intelligent life from other planets. Hepi views the failed experiment as an allegory for desire and misrecognition and examines with tenderness and humour how institutions and systems of surveillance complicate connection.

Amrita Hepi is a First Nations choreographer and dancer from Bundjulung and Ngapuhi territories. Working across film, performance, sculpture, text and participatory installation, Hepi’s practice originates in the body, viewing it as an archive, a memory site and a form of resistance.

Scripture for a smoke screen: Episode 1 – dolphin house is a an ACMI & Samstag Museum of Art commission

Due to ongoing repairs taking place at Samstag Museum of Art this exhibition was presented at SASA Gallery.