HitStories
Lara Dâmaso
Exercice in random laments

For HitStories, Lara Dâmaso pursues her exploration of the/her voice’s communicative, therapeutic and political potential when used irrationally, dissonantly, uncontrollably and unintentionally in relation to the/her body’s movements. She establishes a connection between the movement of the voice (singing) and the movement of the body (dancing), both emitting vibrations that generate a dialogue between the physical, emotional body and the environment in which this body moves.

At HIT, Lara Dâmaso showed a structured dance and vocal improvisation performance that continued to inhabit the exhibition space as an audio installation throughout the duration of her intervention, from July 1 to 4.

To further explore the potential of the voice, Lara Dâmaso invited Colin Self to run a Xoir workshop. Xoir is a non-utilitarian vocal workshop led by Colin Self focused on alternative modalities of group singing. Rooted in somatic research and experimentation, the goal of Xoir is to foster a generative environment for individuals to connect with voice and vocality on an individual and collective level. Xoir is open to anyone interested in exploring their voice as a tool for learning or re-posturing a new relationship to singing and listening. Colin Self composes and choreographs music, performance, and environments for expanding consciousness, troubling binaries and boundaries of perception and communication. THey work with communities across disciplines and practices, using voices, bodies, and computers as tools to interface with biological and technological software.

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HitStories is

A desire to (re)generate non-hegemonic stories

The honouring of embodied practices, knowledge, experiences, beliefs, stories, myths, dreams, theories and fiction internalised individually or collectively

An emphasis on the instinctive, the irrational, the ambiguous, the unconscious, the unspoken, the unsure and the speculative

the celebration of new personal mythologies

A focus on the therapeutic and restorative dimension of sharing and transmitting these stories

An interest in the process that underlies in an artistic approach

A look at how these stories take shape, become concrete, perceptible, tangible, visible, at the crossroads of visual, textual, bodily, oral and sonic forms of expression

Careful attention to listening, to resonance, to echoes

A desire to share moments of physical encounters

A reflection on the archive of these shared moments, on the trace they leave, on the memories they create

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HitStories is a program of performative events and workshops taking place at HIT, a Geneva-based art space, between May 2021 and April 2022. Each episode of HitStories highlights, over a few days, the practice of an artist at HIT. Events (conversations, workshops, etc.) aimed at deepening the research carried out by the artists accompany their performative intervention.

HitStories is supported by Pro Helvetia, la Loterie Romande, la Ville de Genève, la fondation Leenaards, le Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain, DCS, Genève and la Fondation du Jubilé de la Mobilière Suisse Société Coopérative.