mobilization
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Description of campaign/project
Lamentopos
The Lament Chorus is a performance by the Artgroup
Dithyrimbaud
It should take place as an intervention in different public
locations (topi).
The Lament translates feelings of pain, loss and mourning, that especially in former Yugoslavia follow the traces of violence and forced separation. This intervention tries to find those places, where the inscribed history of the public places, during the forced separation, surfaces.
The lamenting voice of the male performer, combines free vocal expression with a verbatim collage as a spontaneous reaction to the public sphere and fills the streets with ranges of sound from mumbling to crying etc. This project is dialogical in the sense that it connects performance art, video art and video installation while relating to the people on location, with the tradition of ancient greek drama.
Translating the idea of the Chorus in greek Tragedy via a minimalistic way into the performance of one single artist, recorded on video with sound. It evolves on the intersection of historic political meaning and marks the absurdity of pain inflicted in the individual in a gesture that derives from the universal meaning of greek tragedy.
The performer is masked and disguised, referencing contemporary people and the universal, symbolic gesture of the greek chorus. These personifications represent everyday people such as business men, graffiti artists and widows, but also metaphorical beings such as death and war. It should convey a certain strangeness and desperate singularity.
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Other comments
Darren Tofts
Entry details
Title
lamentopos
Headline
The Lament Chorus
Concept author(s)
ren fah / anna mitterer
Concept author year(s) of birth
1976/ 1981
Concept author(s) contribution
The Artgroup Dithyrimbaud consists of three visual artists. The performer (Renfah), one artist involved in the creation of masks and disguises (Coelestine Engels) and another artist handling the video and sound recording (Anna Mitterer).
Country
Austria
Designer(s)
coelestine engels
Designer(s) year(s) of birth
1977
Designer(s) contribution
http://engels.xarch.eu
Country
Austria
Competition category
mobilization
Competition field
nonacademic
Competition subfield
artist
Subfield description
in situ
Mourning is without question an essential part of being human and being part of a broader humanity. And it is also a form of labour, of work, as we learned from Freud.
"lamentopos" is a sensitive and very delicate work that in that, as its lyrical title suggests, brings together the work of mourning and a specific space or place for its expression. This is not only the central architectural or installation aspect of the work, but a beautifully poetic metaphor for an intimate place within public space.
This idea of grief and the work of mourning elegantly and poetically appropriates the conceit of the Greek Chorus as a motif for the expression of the deeply personal and painful in public space, rather than a church or a mosque. This is indeed a radical form of intimacy.
The dialogic element of the work emerges from its implicit interaction with a public of onlookers who are gently, or perhaps even dramatically (as in Greek tragedy) drawn into the experience of someone's grief.
The elegance of "lamentopos" is its site specificity. Have you considered developing an online version of the work, that perhaps opens up the work of mourning to a larger and unseen audience? If not I would be very keen to hear your views, though not in an argumentative way, but rather I would be interested in hearing how you see the connection between a very private ritual and a public space (netspace, social media etc) that has unavoidably overlapped the public sphere of physical bodies and social relations.
Thank you for the opportunity to be able to interact with this incsisive and moving work.
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