Force Majeure
SUM PLACES: In the real world, we’ve been active

Saturday 14 June 2014
12:00—17:00

Impromptu performances around town during the day

Force Majeure is a collaborative choral art platform initiated in 2012 by curator/artist Mary Cork. The platform takes its structure from that of a community choir, working with singers from various professional and creative backgrounds on a project-by-project basis. Members of the choir, though not fixed, are often artists or singers working with the medium of sound in alternative ways. Force Majeure produces new projects through collaborative workshops and rehearsals which include people from a variety of creative backgrounds, including artists, composers, curators, choreographers, costume designers, architects.

Inspired by Calvino’s Invisible Cities, in which the narrator tells different stories of the same place, Force Majeure will create a diary of the town through original compositions which will be sung in Whitstable during the day. In collaboration with a local community choir, the singers will wander the town staging impromptu performances in tiny alleyways, random nooks and public spaces. Each singer will sing only part of the entire composition, to comprise a selection of traditional music, textural sounds, wording from local poetry blogs and alternative words sung to familiar tunes. At the end of the day the singers will unite on the beach to perform the composition in its entirety, encircling the audience who in turn gather around a beach fire. On the periphery of the circle sculptural projections of digitally animated imagery, such as wind turbines, will act as visual metronomes to the singers’ voices.

The sounds produced by Force Majeure are abstract and onomatopoeic and at times sourced from traditional music, with a focus on interpreting natural and mechanical sounds through the human voice. Force Majeure is interested in the way that these sounds, when layered, build a unique soundscape that captures the essence of the topic being explored, creating shape, or the sense of something tangible with layered and textured ‘sculptural’ sound and melodies.

Impromptu performances will take place during the day at undisclosed locations. The evening performance will last for approx 30 minutes.