Susan Philipsz - The Two Sisters
The Two Sisters is a two voices sonorous installation, telling the story of a drowning and being about repetition, loss and mourning.
The song The Wind and The Rain is centuries-old and is still sang nowadays. It takes its roots in Scotland and Ireland and has been published under the title The Two Sisters in Popular Ballads by Jamieson in 1656. The song has many versions but its essence remains the same. It is the story of a sororicide, where a sister kills the other by jealousy. The river carries her drowned body until a violonist finds what remains of her body. Her bones and her hair transformed into a violin, but the violonist can only play The Wind and The Rain.
The artist has recorded two versions of the song and plays them simultaneously. While a first version is sung at the 3rd person, the second one is sung at the 1st person, as if we identify with the drowned sister.
Susan Philipsz.
Susan Philipsz is born in 1965 in Glasgow, Scotland. She lives in Berlin. The starting point of her work is the junction of collective memory and individual memory. To create sonorous works, she draws her inspiration from popular litterature and music. She was awarded the Turner Prize in 2010.
Selection of articles and videos.
http://next.liberation.fr/arts/0101...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddes...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddes...
http://search.independent.co.uk/top...
http://www.youtube.com/results?sear...