Gravitational Shift (2019 -) is a continuous choral work by soprano and composer Katinka Fogh Vindelev, conceptualised in collaboration with visual artist Marie Kølbæk Iversen.
Gravitational Shift manifests itself in many different forms: a performative choir piece, workshops, an album release performed by opera singers among others, a song book, an installation etc. The work aims to explore the potentials of collectivizing lonely and isolating pain and trauma experiences. Because that space, that fear catapults one into, however, in their experience to a large extent is speechless, this work aims to establish another communication form than the conversation-based one: Gravitational Shift insists on ‘dialogue’ with the fear and the one being isolated by the fear and pain through music.
The composition is based on sound recordings of women's birth sounds, which are time-stretched and transcribed to extract the melody of horror and pain — a melody that the composition accesses through communal singing in order to dialogue with the terrifying instead of reproducing its affect. It is therefore an elongated, beautiful and meditative expression that contrasts with the composition's immediately dramatic starting point.
On Thursday October 13, 2022, Gravitational Shift will manifest as an audience-involving public choral performance in Ebeltoft Kunsthal on the occasion of the launch of the composition as a vinyl LP.
Audiences are invited to join in the singing, which combines the choral performance of the XXXX choir with solo segments by Katinka Fogh Vindelev and Marie Kølbæk Iversen. The work takes its point of departure in women’s affective birthing sounds, but participation in the event is open to all voices, ages, and genders.
Background
Classical singer and electroacoustic composer Katinka Fogh Vindelev and visual artist Marie Kølbæk Iversen have previously collaborated on the opera Moonologue, performed at Louisiana and Henie Onstad in 2018-19 on the occasion of the exhibition of Kølbæk Iversen’s video work Io/I in the exhibition The Moon. Further, Kølbæk Iversen released her record Donnimaar. Vredens Børn on Fogh Vindelev’s label MoBC Records in 2021-22.