Australian artist Agatha Gothe-Snape presents Rhetorical Chorus (LW), a performance inspired by a chance encounter with legendary conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner that explores the role of the physical body in transmitting and receiving knowledge.
Piecing together a gestural lexicon of Weiner’s hand movements, and an expanded verbal vocabulary gathered from his every text work, the piece is a visual and aural collage of images, texts and sounds that engulf the audience. Rhetorical Chorus (LW) presents an improvised choral performance in the byzantine tradition of cheironomia, a musical system notated by hand gestures, accompanied by an animated digital PowerPoint presentation, each illuminating the dual lexicons of Lawrence Weiner. Unraveling the interconnected legacies and influences of modernism and conceptual art in their respective practices, Gothe-Snape follows these threads through acts of embodiment, expression and transference in this layered and multi-sensory circulation and consumption of knowledge.
Co-commissioned by Performance Space, Sydney, Australia and the Keir Foundation. Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts with additional support from The Commercial, Sydney.