Coil of Days is a live performance, film and series of seven sonic sculptures created in 2018-19.
Extracts from Coil of Days film – Top: Chapter 4: Epic Nature is performed by Priya Mistry, Josefina Camus, Letizia Binda-Partensky and Céline Tschachtli, read by Amy Lay-Pettifer. Bottom: Chapter 3: An Evolutionary Remnant is performed by Priya Mistry and read by Fer Boyd. Rock instrument in Coil of Days, Rita Evans 2019.
Coil of Days was exhibited at Tate St Ives, 3 February – 3 May 2022 as part of the exhibition of my Stringing the Matrix Tate St Ives commission.
Coil of Days was premiered at Towner International Biennial exhibition of contemporary art at Towner Eastbourne in October 2020 – April 2021. It was selected by Polly Staple (Director of Collection, British Art, Tate), artist Mike Nelson, and Noelle Collins (Exhibitions & Offsite Curator, Towner Eastbourne).
In Coil of Days, a series of collaborations unfold around eight sonic sculptures and instruments. In the performance and film, we unfurl the sonic spaces of the sensitive instruments playing and working them as our shared tools. In the first scene, Chapter 1, Bated Breath, we introduce The Realm of Openings. In Chapter 2, Communal Breath, our playing of the Aqueous Spine vertebrate instrument creates liquid sounds that connect us. Breath condensation transforms the pitch of the flutes in the Sphinx instrument as it is played, the tone of which was adjusted by the opening and closing of doors in the instrument’s body. In Chapter 3, An Evolutionary Remnant, we used the light bow and heavy rock instruments to propagate and root us in our newly established landscape. In Chapter 6, The Thinking Reed, we play manifold reeded pipes to sample and filter the air as one multi-limbed being. In Chapter 7, Trefoil, our triangular instrument with tremolo arms, creates geometric shapes and pitch-shifting sounds that play out in our negotiations. Finally, in Chapter 8, The Instinctive Unfolding, we tessellate our bodies around the metal diamond instrument.
In the film, memorandums written by Amy Lay-Pettifer in response to each instrument are read by eight women and blended into the audiovisual compositions. Amy also reads the voice of artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun in the film. The memorandums are based on the personal and tactile nature of our work.
The chapters are named: (1) Bated Breath (2) Communal Breath (3) An Evolutionary Remnant (4) Epic Nature (5) Not Leisure (6) The Thinking Reed (7) Trefoil, and (8) The Instinctive Unfolding.
The performance was choreographed by Pepa Ubera.
Coil of Days 2020 Link to full credits
What struck me was the audacity of the opening. It was the loveliest note, long and low, signalling the possibility of another kind of presence as yet undefined in this realm of opening.
(I think you should be gentler).
Your voice, many hands, my suggestions. Our time, my reach vs your reach. All there for us to gather together and gradually untangle.
All of it relative, all of it apart. All of it singing its own pattern.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. canadacouncil.ca
