Supported by Outset Scotland SING SIGN: a close duet is the first video installation by Tuulikki, originally commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival for their 2015 programme, ‘The Improbable City’. It was made in direct response to the history and geography of the narrow closes (a Scots term for ancient alleyways) that run from Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, the spine that forms the main thoroughfare of the city’s Old Town. Although the work is located within a particular place, it touches on universal themes regarding the passing of time and human interaction, and primarily explores modes of communication, whether it is between two individuals or the body with its surroundings.
The installation comprises two monitors installed opposite each other. On each screen, almost life-size, and as if standing facing each other, two performers appear (the artist and her collaborator, Daniel Padden) and engage in a wordless duet using vocal sounds and gestures drawn from British Sign Language. With their backs turned towards the opposite ends of the passageway connecting the visible city to its hidden interior, two worlds collide in a poetic dialogue.
Tuulikki was interested in the egalitarian nature of the Royal Mile, inhabited by people from all walks of life throughout its history. She was also struck by the names of closes, and their historic significance, discovering for example that an inn in one close was the birthplace of Scottish Baroque music, where folk and classical forms were combined by musicians. The structure for Tuulikki’s musical composition derived from a 1765 map featuring the Royal Mile, turning the city itself into a musical score. Using its design as a rubric, Tuulikki settled on the hocket form, a musical device used since the 13th century in which a single melody is shared by two voices, each taking a turn while the other rests, reflecting the rhythms and irregularities of the historical city. Stretching their voices to share a pitch range, the performers’ dialogue undermines normative gendered voices.
The work is divided into four movements, named after the traditional Baroque Dance Suite, developed during the 17th century in France: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue. As the day turns to dusk, and falls into darkness, so does the wordless interaction shift with each movement, the performers swaying and inhaling together with the reverberation of the passageway and the surrounding city, pregnant with sound. The synchronized signing translates names of several historic closes, chosen by the artist due to the similarity in patterns used to make these signs. The silent repetitive gestures transform a language into motion, an elaborate dance that evokes a Baroque ballroom scene. The enigmatic encounter of ‘singing’ and ‘signing’ poses a fundamental question about how the languages we have access to condition our experience of the world and of each other.
