Prelude/Requiem

The Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, ON. May 13 - August 27, 2023

Curated by Megan Kammerer

This immersive 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 explored the sounds of loving connection during fundamental moments of transition at both ends of the life cycle. The installation invited visitors to repose and be bathed in multichannel sound and light, encouraging introspection across aural 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 Bulgarian expecting mother sings a lullaby to her unborn child; An ageing Holocaust survivor recalls Hebrew cradle songs with assistance from his wife. 

These intimate melodies were juxtaposed with percussion, and with swells of the symphonic grandeur of Manuel Cardosa’s 1624 polyphonic Requiem, a ceremonial hymn for easing the passage of the soul into heaven. Prelude / Requiem employed both private and public moments of transition and transcendence to encourage visitors to recline, listen deeply, and dream.