In this episode, Elodie sits down with Heather McCalden to discuss her inventive and deeply moving book The Observable Universe, a memoir, mystery, investigation, and work of cultural commentary.
Heather lost both of her parents to AIDS when she was a child. Years later, following the death of her grandmother Nivia, she started researching the history of HIV and discovered that the history of the virus and the internet ran on parallel timelines. That discovery led her down a fascinating rabbit hole, where virality began to take on a multitude of meanings.
We plunge down that rabbit hole with her, a journey that takes us into unexpected territory and offers no definite conclusions. At the book’s center is a heart that thrums with grief, a heart that knows that to be alive is to be transformed on a cellular level.
A conversation on technology and consciousness, writing’s relationship to the body, grief, and the process of making art in the digital age.
08:10 - On memoir and unresolved endings
17:15 - Heather’s process of writing The Observable Universe
24:49 - On writing and embodiment
30:48 - Heather’s practice as a photographer and her creative influences
41:00 - COVID and how collective trauma influences literature and art
Heather McCalden is a multidisciplinary artist working with text, image and movement. She is a graduate of the Royal College of Art (2015) and has exhibited at Tanz Company Gervasi, Roulette Intermedium, Pierogi Gallery, National Sawdust, Zabludowicz Collection, Testbed 1, Flux Dubai and with Seattle Symphony Orchestra. In 2017 she attended the Emerging Writers Intensive at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity and returned in 2018 for their Summer Writers Residency. In January 2021, she participated in the Tin House Winter Workshop. The Observable Universe is her first book.
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