Triptych installation for Charged, a group exhibition Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, USA

Artists: Alan Rath, Stacey Steers, Pors and Rao, Ross Birrell and David Harding, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Memo Akten

At the heart of Triptych is a three-channel film documenting a performance of Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (1976) in the Megaron Concert Hall, Athens. Conceived for documenta 14, the concert was performed by the Athens State Orchestra with the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra (founded in 2015 by Raed Jazbeh) and featuring Syrian soprano, Rasha Rizk.

Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs is a moving lament, reflecting the experience of loss as a result of war. A sense of separation and absence pervades the film installation. A central screen documents a wide view of the orchestra and conductor, Daniel Raiskin, while two side panels appear to focus upon an empty space – a space which awaits the solo performance of Rizk.

Alongside Gorecki, the Athens concert also included a performance of Fugue, a project developed by Ross Birrell in collaboration with the Syrian composer and violinist, Ali Moraly. Fugue shares the same etymology as refugee, and in an echo of the subject and countersubject which characterizes contrapuntal fugal form, an initial theme was sent by Birrell to Moraly inviting a response which ultimately took the form of Moraly’s Quatrain for Solo Violin after Paul Celan’s Death Fugue.

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