Lullaby for a Slow Apocalypse
A performative installation
Walk into this barren landscape. It is inviting despite its emptiness, warm. Wind chimes sound through the space and low tones hum from a lichens dabbled rock. There’s a mirrored UV screen, the material we used to place on windows to protect our selves from the sun hauntingly concededly in the center. Colors and textures are dance on the rock, chimes and screens. They’re images of our past world. Above us a glistening and smokey, the clouds hang above our heads.
The lore, literature, and eyes through which we predict the end of the world depict a singular event, fiery and full of violence. What if this is wrong? What if the apocalypse is not a singular dramatic event but rather a glacial paced change. What if we reframe the apocalypse from the matriarchal perspective? What if it's soft, warm, gentle? Yes it can still be scary but we can be comforted on the journey. What we need is a Lullaby for the Slow Apocalypse.
In 2021 ShowPony.world was launched in collaboration with The Rodina. World is an online gathering spot for the release of Show Pony’s debut EP, co-written with No Compliments. World was commissioned and launched during the online edition of Rewire festival. After two years of online work the Show Pony team was ready to create something tactile and real. We wished to translate our online space into a real space. An organism living and breathing. As the world continues to evolve one to one translation of online space needed to evolve as well. It evolved into a space with an instrument that the audience can play, a rock where the audience can sit and feel the music, and projections which fill the space with light. From the created space the musicians compose and improvise music as well as playing songs from Show Pony. Together with the space as an inspiration and the instrument we play the Lullaby for a Slow Apocalypse.
Installation by Laura Nygren, Tatiana Rosa, Simon van Steenis
Source video material: The Rodina, Giulia Principe, Hogwash, Paul Heyduck, Moa Holgersson
Music by Show Pony & No Compliments
Performed by Show Pony, No Compliments, Isa Goldschmeding, Thora Margrét Sveinsdóttir, Alistair Sung
Sound: Arjan van Asselt