Sometimes literally, as with Deva Schubert. While I watched her Glitch Choir from the floor of mumok, museum of modern art, I sensed her movements behind me and suddenly felt her inner thighs opening up and sliding down my back. Schubert and her co-performer Chihiro Araki allow public and private spheres to collide, travelling through the audience and relying on random spectators to support their collapses. They fill the space simultaneously with movement and chant, a lamentation song amplified by microphones and echoes on the walls. Layers, directions and qualities of singing stack up and build a bewildering, distorted soundscape. When the performers press their lips together, and cry ‘into’ each other, their own vibrating bodies become the bearers of the mourning at an unsettling, alienating frequency. With this performance Schubert powerfully stimulates our 360 degree awareness and sensory orientation, invoking an intimate experience in the least obvious of environments, using the empty, cold and spacious exhibition hall to …
