
CLOSE-UP: YOUR LOSS
HOW MANY OF US, when we speak with our parents, feel like stock characters, as though we were simulations of ourselves? In The Worm, 2021, the centerpiece of “Get Life/Love’s Work,” his recent show at the New Museum in New York, the English artist Ed Atkins presents a telephone call with his mother in this very manner. In the roughly thirteen-minute animation, his mum is heard but not seen, while Atkins is rendered, by way of performance-capture technology, as a digital avatar who listens attentively, mumbling in agreement, sympathy, or surprise, asking a question only when her narrative falters.