Prelude/Requiem

May 13 - August 27, 2023 — VAC

This audio visual work was built upon lullabies and farewell songs, sung to lull infants to sleep or ease passages into a final resting place. It honoured and explored our loving connections during fundamental moments of transition and both ends of the life cycle. This immersive installation invited visitors to repose and be bathed in multichannel sound and light, encouraging introspection across oral cultures. 

Prelude / Requiem emerged from a twelve-year research practice in which Heather Nicol collected audio recordings made during encounters with her family members, fellow creatives, migrant youth, newcomers, travellers, and friends: A fifteen-year-old Nigerian refugee shares melodies from home while displaced in Berlin; A new mother sings Bulgarian lullabies to her unborn child; An ageing Holocaust survivor recalls Hebrew cradle songs with assistance from his wife. 

These intimate melodies were juxtaposed with the symphonic grandeur of Manuel Cardosa’s 1624 polyphonic Requiem, a ceremonial song intended to ease the passage of the soul to heaven. Prelude / Requiem empowered both private and public moments of transition and transcendence while encouraging visitors to slow down, recline, and rest in an act of aural gathering.