Philomela

Overview

In 2014 I explored in different ways the violent story of the tortured princess Philomela, her survival drive and cunning escape and her morphic regaining of freedom as a singing nightingale.

The Philomela story is based on one of the Ovidian metamorphic tales. It was much retold by medieval writers. The Athenian princess Philomel (Philomena in the Old French version, Philomela in the Chaucer translation) is kidnapped and raped by her brother-in-law Tereus. Because of her proud and verbal protest he cuts her tongue off so that she cannot tell the tale and reveal his identity. This doesn’t stop her. She manages to tell her story and her location by weaving a piece of tapestry and get it sent to her sister Procne who finds her and frees her. The confrontation with Tereus leads to his brutal murder. Exhausted yet freed, Philomela is transformed into a singing nightingale, her sister into a swallow.

One can sing but one cannot speak without a tongue. Once torn from articulacy one must look for another way to speak. In this sequence, I recreate line 2328 of Chaucer’s Philomela. The attention is on the brutal point of cut, on the violent tearing from speech and articulacy, on her uttered cry for help.

The Philomela project is singular in my production in that it started with drawing rather than with writing or sound recording and it has not yet found its live performance or installed form.From the start, I have imagined this project as an aria for a woven female voice. Female voice woven into noise. Female voice trailing its noise. Noise that reveals a voice and its voicing. One can sing but one cannot speak without a tongue. Once torn from articulacy one must look for another way to speak.

This series was published with an accompanying note as “Philomel: Aria for Woven Voice” in an issue on Performance Drawing, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art May 2014, Vol. 36, No. 2 (107) . Thank you to Bonnie Marranca.