performance
Polyphony as Collaboration
Je suis dans la lune
Je suis dans l’étoile
Je suis dans la lune
Je suis dans l’espace
Je suis dans tout
Je suis dans l’espace
Je suis dans l’étoile
Je suis dans tout
Je suis dans la fleur
Je suis dans tous ce que je veux
Je suis dans l'espace
Je suis dans le vaisseau
Je suis dans tous ce que je veux
Vue de la performance de Sheila Donovan, Polyphony as Collaboration, 2022. Dans l’exposition Prémonition de Jagna Ciuchta, 2022, Artothèque de Caen, Espaces d’art contemporain. Photo Jagna Ciuchta. I’m in everything, poème improvisé par ma fille Aïcha Atala sur une piste sonore composée pour la performance.
Upcall
An Upcall is a sound made by a whale to locate other whales in their vicinity, to bring them together. It is also the call that is best registered on sonic recording equipment used by marine scientists to track whales. This working title is playing with the idea of the upcall as my call to marine scientists for a collaboration and connection across our art/science disciplines. In this ongoing research, I explore the archives of marine research institutions, and historical representations of the relationship between humans and whales found in whaling museums. The result of this research will be a lecture performance presenting stories and interviews, using original and archival sounds in an original composition and the exhibition of images created during the research period along with archival images. This performance questions the crossings of data collection and affective states, archive and imagination. Image credits, in order: The Chase of the Bowhead Whale, Clifford Warren Ashley; Essex being struck by a whale, Thomas Nickerson; to surface, Sheila Donovan; Ships and Whales in a Tempest, P.D.P. Monogrammist, circa 1595; Stranded on a Whale Carcass, Anton Otto Fischer; violent care, Sheila Donovan.