crying choir, 2024
performance, score and steel structure, wood
variable time and dimensions

The “Crying Choir” is a performative piece where a group of male actors and singers cry in conjunction. A central aspect of the work is playing with orchestrating what appears to be “inorchestrable”. It’s between the real drama, pure emotion, in an excessively artificial manner. As the score of the piece says “There’s a play with loosing oneself to tears and the mastery of control.” Thus, the tonic of the piece is in this gesture of strangeness, a very simple one, crying in a public space (rather than the comfort of the intimate space). With this strangeness, of this gesture out of place, the reaction of the public could go to many directions, including two diametrically opposed: the empathy of the public who would join the collective crying or the pressure release valve that is the laughter.

For the exhibition at the Wild Trumpets, the work is presented only as a score and a prop for the performance. It’s only the potentiality of the happening. This reinforces the rather improbable aspect of this piece and the difficulty of performing it. On another hand, it indicates that through the score – the description of the piece and the way one could interpret – the public can imagine their own version of the work.