(untitled lament)

First performed at Eastside Projects (Birmingham, UK) as part of itch. on 27 June 2024.

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​Solastalgia is a form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change. In a world facing climate breakdown, these feelings of anxiety, longing, and sense of displacement are becoming ever more prevalent. This performance channels these energies, giving them form as a solemn and plaintive cy.  The work is centred around an incantatory and unrelenting monody, a solo vocal form distinguished by having a single melodic line and simple instrumental accompaniment. This ‘new’ composition rewrites Robert Burns’ melancholic poem ‘My Heart’s in the Highlands, delivered in a strained version of Arvo Pärt’s musical score. It was first drafted in August 2023, you can listen to it here. 

The performance is therefore conceived as kind of future lament, a penitent prayer for after the collapse, an unashamed elegy for the loss of nature and civilisation as we know it, a final song before it all comes to an end. The formal repetition of phrases, acting to toll a resonant bell seeking to reinforce the urgency with which we must act to avoid the catastrophe.

Several tonnes of earth, placed in the gallery as part of melissandre varin’s dirty nails (les ongles noirs), serve as an apocalyptic and desolate landscape for the performance, with objects often dug up or buried in the soil as part of the proceedings. Unfolding in a ritualistic and quasi-funerial manner, the piece is made up of lyrical actions and shamanic tasks involving a number of totemic objects. Rather than illustrating the text, they provide a visual and performative counterpoint. Throughout, I slowly change from a human form to another kind of entity encompassing both flora and fauna and calling back to the ancient Gaelic god Cernunnos, the lord of wild things,  mediator of man and nature, able to tame predator and prey so they might lie down together.

​Though the work’s Queerness might not be immediately apparent at first because it does not address identity politics, it is fundamentally shaped by my Queer sensibilities and approaches (i.e. a commitment to poetic and fluid dramaturgies, a quasi-operatic tone, a deliberate semiotic porosity, a visceral visual language). Moreover, the work seeks to approach and articulate the topic of climate change from a Queer perspective by deliberately resisting easy 'solutions' or 'reassurances', instead asking the audience to acknowledge and sit in their shared solastalgia, in the hope of beginning to exorcise and process our climate anxiety and grief. Nevertheless, amongst the despair conjured by the performance, there is one final glimmer of possible hope. The piece draws to a close as Sym Mendez (curator of itch.) enters the space with a glass bowl and a new kind of energy. I then place a dried-up Rose of Jericho (Resurrection Plant) in this glass bowl and pour water over it, exiting the space with Mendez and leaving the audience to witness the plant’s slow unfurling. 
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