Susannah Stark and Donald Hayden | Searchlights

A live performance in the gallery exploring female Cynics, language and spam, interacting with installed works in the exhibition Lilt Twang Tremor.

Searchlights refers to a quote from Chris Kraus’ book Torpor where she speaks of wanting to find a place in the world for the female voice. After playing a Lydia Lunch song Spooky Little Boy on repeat for an entire day whilst being accidentally locked in an apartment by her neglectful partner, she writes, “the voice was everything, a searchlight in the darkened apartment”; she then describes the female voice as “a dirge for everything”.

The Cynic history is revisited to explore elements of language that have a particular gendered resonance; highlighting the flow of things - words - traded in a capitalist marketplace. The piece is a collaboration with musician Donald Hayden, and treats the voice as a searchlight calling on the listener to wake up and the strength gained through the union of the two voices together.

This performance took place Sun 14 January 2018 and was part of the exhibition Lilt, Twang, Tremor | Sarah Rose, Susannah Stark & Hanna Tuulikki, which ran Sat 18 November 2017 — Sun 14 January 2018.