This song is for… Vol 1 / 2021, 6-vinyl record collection & listening room, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town. photos by Hayden Phipps
THIS SONG IS FOR … Vol 1
2021
Presented as an interactive listening room, This song is for… vol 1 is a unique collection of six vinyl records, drawn from the artist’s multi-channel video and sound installation, This song is for… (2019). In this more intimate context, the tactile, interactive form of the records engenders a different kind of listening experience, in which rituals of care attend and grant reverence to the sonic experience.
In This song is for… 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. Each of the eleven songs (six of which are included here) were personally chosen by a survivor of rape and subsequently performed as a newly produced cover-version. These are songs of special 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, recalling the ‘broken record’ effect of a scratched vinyl LP. Presented in this performed musical rupture 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.