Very grateful with Margaret Koudelcova from Routed Magazine for reviewing Unravelling!
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Space to listen: Hear voices of women-on-the-move travelling the world* (installation review)
What is it like to move to a different country? To cross thousands of miles, across the ocean? What is it like to migrate as a Colombian woman, arriving in Europe?
🎊 Unravelling / Desenredando 🎊 a surround-sound bilingual installation (Spanish and English) invites you to listen to voices of nine Colombian women from varied backgrounds, as they listen to and resonate with each others’ stories of their migratory journeys to Europe.
Premiered at Arnolfini Arts, the installation, like the voices of the women, is travelling the world, from Bristol (UK, 2-3 March), to Bogotá and Manizales (Colombia, 6-12 May) and back to Belfast (Northern Ireland, September).
The sound artist-researcher Ximena Alarcon (PhD, MA, BA) and the composer and spatial audio researcher Ulf A. S. Holbrook wove an hour’s long tapestry from the (audio) encounters of the nine women, from their relationships, creating a space that feels at once welcoming, captivating, and strange. Whether you understand the words or only the emotions, you are invited to pause and move around, listening to both the words and the breathing pauses, and simultaneously try to listen to your own breathing. Stay as long as you wish, enjoy your visit – and maybe leave with a new faint thread tying you to a community of sisterhood across borders.
*Routed’s Editor-in-Chief, Margaret Koudelkova, would like to thank Ximena Alarcon (PhD, MA, BA) for the invitation to the premiere event, and Arnolfini Arts for commissioning the review.