Participatory performance
2024 – ongoing
This work began in 2024 and is an ongoing project. Its structure resembles a performance in which a performer attempts to sing the verses of a text created using the cadavre exquis method. This means that none of the contributors, who each wrote a small part of the verse based on the last line of the previous person, are aware of the other’s contributions. The text follows a sound that varies depending on the situation and the performance’s location. This sound could be the ticking of a metronome, a woodworm, the creaking of a piece of furniture settling, or a melody specifically composed for the song’s theme. In any case, the sound is not created alongside the lyrics, resulting in dissonance. The performance — different each time it is executed due to the changing performers and sounds to which the text must adapt — becomes an attempt to build an unstable equilibrium, a form of resistance against oblivion through oral repetition.
The songs arise from themes related to my artistic research, personal fears, or socio-political events of the moment in which each song is created.
The participants are all people with whom I have discussed the theme of the song they are invited to contribute to. The final form of a sung event stems from a reflection on the meaning of the present—a moment that is inextricably linked to the past and the future but, in itself, does not last except in the memory of a lived event, extending it for the duration of the performance. It is a political work because it speaks about our contemporary world, though without the intention of fixing it, thus becoming an unstable “territory” for reflection on who we are and the historical moment in which we live.
Documentation of the performance realized for my solo exhibition: “at the edge of everything we are”, curated by Ajola Xoxa at NAAN Gallery, Tirana.
Performer: Viki Haxhi, Roel Shyle
Loop sound composed by: Donovan McKenzie
