X, is an audio montage by Mariella Otto & Loke Berg, produced for city bus line 25 in Gothenburg, as part of GIBCA’s 2021 edition The Ghost Ship and the Sea Change. Using voices, ambience and music – X appropriates sound in line with cinematographic traditions and storytelling. A fragmented narrative on acts of naming, origin and ideologies of progression, are presented in Swedish, Arabic and English, where the concept of a ‘dark science’ is held central. The work establishes analogies between a politicized ‘west’ and the characteristics and aesthetics of a ‘wild west’, aiming to raise questions on ethical compromise and lawlessness embedded in capitalism. Departing from historic events and characters -in scientific evolution and colonialism- the piece connects to points on its designated route, for instance, referencing Carl Linnaeus and his questionable work on the human species, as well as the Swedish East India Company. The title has its source in the story about ‘Photo 51’; the first X-ray diffraction image of DNA fiber, taken by Rosalind Franklin in 1952. Channeled through speech and evocative sound scapes, the scientific history of genealogy, ideas on collective history and thoughts on the sense of belonging , interlace with a story of the protagonist “cowboy” a stubborn individualist, deemed to eventually face the end.
