Lilt, Twang, Tremor 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.