This song is for… / Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg, 2020, Installation views, Photos courtesy Göteborgs Konsthall
THIS SONG IS FOR …
2019 -
In This song is for… Gabrielle Goliath returns to and re-performs the popular convention of the dedication song, in collaboration with a group of women and gender-queer led musical ensembles.
Playing sequentially within the immersive, sonic space of the installation is a unique collection of dedication songs, each chosen by a survivor of rape and performed as a newly produced cover-version. These are songs of personal significance to the survivors – songs that transport them back to a particular time and place, evoking a sensory world of memory and feeling.
A sonic disruption is introduced at a point within each song; a recurring musical rupture recalling the ‘broken record’ effect of a scratched vinyl LP. Presented in this performed disruption is an opportunity for listeners to affectively inhabit a contested space of traumatic recall – one in which the de-subjectifying violence of rape and its psychic afterlives become painfully entangled with personal and political claims to life, dignity, hope, faith, even joy.