I Can Still Hear Your Laughter
multi-disciplinary choreography by Yalda Younes (2023-open-ended)
I Can Still Hear Your Laughter is an open-ended, multi-disciplinary choreography that began with a meditation on wildness as a pillar of care and went on to contemplate the perpetual fragmentation of both thought and land. Delving into the artist’s personal and interpersonal relationships with the human, vegetal, and mineral environments that shaped her upbringing, the work employs an autobiographical lens to reflect on the growing schism between direct experience of the world, and inherited constructs of hierarchical knowledge.
Produced by experimenting in ways that challenge the restrictions of the artist’s technophobia and question the finitude of recorded footage, I Can Still Hear Your Laughter ’s audio-visual material is crafted with processes that require minimal technical skills and seek a re-encounter with elements intrinsic to live performance, namely improvisation, randomness and mistake. The sound score weaves field recordings of the mountainscape with deconstructed zapateado (flamenco footwork) and hints of buzuq, also captured on location during the shoot, using the mountains as a gigantic recording studio.
Intimately weaving together memory, imprint and imagination, the choreographic patterns unravel an atemporal stream of ramblings intertwining the mental and ecological worlds, evoking the necessity to inherit the greenness and rewild the brain.
original audio-visual material all filmed and recorded in Chatine, North Lebanon choreography, image, text, zapateado, sound score Yalda Younes field and sound recording, buzuq, camera assistance Khyam Allami produced by Yalda Younes with the support of a grant from AFAC - Arab Funds for Culture research stages supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste #takecare program, Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa research stipendium many thanks to the mountains of Chatine, Khyam Allami, Rania Younes, Samar Younes, Mohamad Gawad, Salma Shamel, Setareh Shahbazi, Matthieu Banvillet, Jawad Chaaban and One Hertz Studio
Produced by experimenting in ways that challenge the restrictions of the artist’s technophobia and question the finitude of recorded footage, I Can Still Hear Your Laughter ’s audio-visual material is crafted with processes that require minimal technical skills and seek a re-encounter with elements intrinsic to live performance, namely improvisation, randomness and mistake. The sound score weaves field recordings of the mountainscape with deconstructed zapateado (flamenco footwork) and hints of buzuq, also captured on location during the shoot, using the mountains as a gigantic recording studio.
Intimately weaving together memory, imprint and imagination, the choreographic patterns unravel an atemporal stream of ramblings intertwining the mental and ecological worlds, evoking the necessity to inherit the greenness and rewild the brain.
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original audio-visual material all filmed and recorded in Chatine, North Lebanon choreography, image, text, zapateado, sound score Yalda Younes field and sound recording, buzuq, camera assistance Khyam Allami produced by Yalda Younes with the support of a grant from AFAC - Arab Funds for Culture research stages supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste #takecare program, Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa research stipendium many thanks to the mountains of Chatine, Khyam Allami, Rania Younes, Samar Younes, Mohamad Gawad, Salma Shamel, Setareh Shahbazi, Matthieu Banvillet, Jawad Chaaban and One Hertz Studio