Lina Lapelytė – Study of Slope, 2022-2024

Lina Lapelytė uses music, installation and performance to transform individual narratives into collective voices. She works with both professional and amateur performers often using voice. Their vocal performance develops into a collective, emotionally charged event that celebrates polyphony, attentive listening and individual expression. By the way her works break with the codes of Western musical tradition, she invites us to reconsider existing social constructs and to rethink the place of the individual within the community.

The installation-performance Study of Slope (also known as The Mutes) is performed by a choir of people who considered themselves non musical or “tone deaf” with no “ear for music” and that have their own and non conventional relationship with music and tonality. The texts sung by these performers are taken from Sean Ashton’s novel, Living in a Land, texts consisting mainly of things the narrator has never done, no longer does or will never do.The work unfolds in the middle of a garden of stinging nettles, plants that also have medicinal properties, thus heightening the symbolic significance of Study of Slope and inviting us to question and shake off our usual categorisations. The ceramic ramps and aslant shoes embody the instability and precariousness of the individual’s position in society, while at the same time suggesting possible new ways of striking a balance. Study of Slope renews perceptions and questions notions of normality and non-conformity through the voices of those who sing “out of tune” and are generally kept from being heard.