2nd November, 2025

Myriam Van Imschoot is a performance artist based in Belguim, working through the medium of voice in performance, film and installation.

Marcus Bergner also based in Belgium, has exhibited and worked extensively in the fields of sound poetry and experimental film.

Tomoko Hojo is a sound artist based in Japan, and works at the intersection between sound, music and performance. She traveled to Melbourne from Japan especially for this performance.

Together they join forces to mount a unique combination of sound poetry, performance art and shadow play. For virtually everything in life involves shadows, either physically or metaphorically, but rarely do we recognise the presence and influence of such elusive phenomena. This performance emerges from reflecting on the ancient phrase lux lucet in tenebris (‘light shines in shadow’) and, in so doing, sets out to transform the environment in which it is performed into a platform for collective observation and listening.

Based on a previous performance by Van Imschoot and Bergner titled YOKE that premiered in Belgrade in 2021, and which arose from a three month residency at the art and cultural centre MAGACIN. Which is a long-running artist and community space in the centre of Belgrade operating from principles of open access, autonomy, social solidarity and diversity. Bringing a reiterated and new version of YOKE to GalleryGallery seems especially appropriate and fortuitous since it also offers an art space driven by similar principles of autonomy, community solidarity and diversity. And as such the performance forges a lateral and formative bridge of exchange between two specially independent art institutions at different ends of the globe.

The force of the voice across subjective/inner and social/outer manifestations will form the strategic leitmotif during what will be a week long en-site residency by the artists within the space of GalleryGallery and its immediate locality. And, out of which the performance will be shaped.

Also, a number of disparate but inter-relatable historical or poetical perspectives act as points of reference for investigating the voice's presence or absence in the streets of Brunswick and beyond (these perspectives deliver moments for imaginative reflection and experimentation but will not be described or enacted within the performance itself).

The first comes from the French philosopher Paul Virilio who declared: “After having lost the street in the nineteenth century, people are now also losing their voice.” Another arrives from an act of political intervention that occurred in Brunswick during the depression in1933. Involving the artist Noel Counihan and his comrade Reginald 'Shorty' Patullo who both lead a 'free speech battle' on the corner of Sydney Road and Phoenix Street in defiance of anti-protest laws introduced at the time by the State Government. For the event Patullo jumped on the top of a tram to address the thousand of protesters and onlookers and was promptly shot in the thigh by the police and arrested. Whereas Counihan locked himself in a large steel cage in the street from which he addressed the same crowd uninterrupted as the police struggled desperately to break him out of the cage to be eventually arrested also. The publicity these acts of insurgence attracted and the following court cases were instrumental in having the laws against public protest retracted. The third perspective is from the French writer and playwright Hélène Cixous who wrote in Sorties: “Voice!....the frantic descent deeper to where a voice that doesn't know itself is lost in the sea's churning....Agony – spoken 'word' exploded, blown to bits.”

The performance runs for between 30 to 40 minutes.