FIAC

Susan Philipsz

Susan Philipsz was born in 1965 in Glasgow, Scotland, and currently lives in Berlin. Inspired by literature and popular music, her work examines the intersection between collective and individual memory. "Woods So Wild" consists of two a cappella recordings of an Elizabethan song. In "Finnegan's Wake", James Joyce used words from this song to describe a female character based on his daughter Lucia, a passionate dancer in the naturalist style who performed in Paris before being committed to an insane asylum. The two audio recordings in Susan Philipsz's work - shifting from one sound source to the other through the trees of the Tuileries gardens - produce a melancholy, ethereal song: an eerie homage to a forgotten dancer.

FIAC 09 | Jardin des Tuileries

Installation sonore
Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin

Photo:
Lucia Joyce dansant dans un costume fait par elle-même pour une compétition au Bal Bullier à Paris en mai 1929.
Courtesy The Stuart Gilbert Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
Photographe inconnu.