Silent Stories audio soundscape, made by Katharine Dowson, 2021. Silent Stories is a series of glass sculptures cast from the moulds of masks made for people receiving radiotherapy for neck and throat cancer in 2010. This soundscape, commissioned for the Cancer Revolution exhibition in 2021, features the voices of five of those patients sharing their emotions, memories of treatment and subsequent life experiences, ten years on after treatment.
Cancer is a commonly experienced disease. For many people, the emotional, physical and social consequences of being diagnosed with cancer and being treated for it, can be felt for years. This soundscape, an audio narrative woven from the voices of patients treated for neck and throat cancer was commissioned by the Science Museum in 2021, to feature in an exhibition called Cancer Revolution. It was made by the artist Katharine Dowson, to accompany the display of her Silent Stories series of glass sculptures cast from the moulds of patients receiving radiotherapy for neck and throat cancer.
About Silent Stories, Katharine says: ‘The glass creates the impression of suspended time, a snapshot memory of the moment. I use glass as a metaphor for the imperfection and fragility of life; the casts incidentally capture the patients’ portrait in a moment of vulnerability – echoes of which can be heard in the soundscape. To see through the glass from both sides encourages the viewer to ask questions about a person’s inner self, intensified by the intimate soundscape, where individuals describe their thoughts and feelings of then and now.’
