Abstract/Summary

Workshop/Performance, consists of singing a new version of the National Anthem, “God Save the Queen”, using the original scores, but singing it in the Polish language, guided by a choir director and an interpreter. The work, which Godoy calls “hacking the national anthem through an act of translation”, is part of his continuous research into the voice and its inherent physical aspects. He believes that what emerges in a choir’s performance can have a transformative capacity for participants and audiences, a counter-power to the way nations and religions have used the human voice throughout history as part of their systems of legitimisation. Godoy’s works attempt to deconstruct current political affairs as a scenography, a ‘theatre of the present’ in which we participate. Rituals of validation through which authority is legitimized are exposed through the use of displacement and camouflage. The event forms part of (Un)Commoning Voices & (Non)Communal Bodies, a series of workshops, performances, and an exhibition, interrogating the relationship between artistic practices and protest movements via the performative scores of collective bodies and voices. The interdisciplinary program was inspired by the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp which was active from 1981 to 2000. It was established by women to protest nuclear weapons being sited near Reading at RAF Greenham Common.