Aliya Orr

A band of travellers, drifting beings cast out on a fugitive voyage are brought together through the embracing of a strange path. Exiled and estranged they move in opaque flows of mutating systems and algorithmic patterns. Surfing the paradox and seeking a third way, they embark on a journey without destination. Their mode of transport, a musical boat.

‘Night Journey’ explores voice, embodied movement and materiality as interwoven agencies for cooperative emancipation. The work entangles histories, ambiguous mechanisms and improvisational somatics, exploring ideas of cross-generational healing and mutual becomings through sound, sculpture and performance. 

The boat is inspired by a reimagining of an ancient drawing of 12th Century Islamic polymath Ismail Al-Jazari’s musical boat, one of the first recorded examples of a mechanical automata. On board the original vessel, a group of Qiyan*, transformed into mechanical puppets, sound and chant exaltations and lamentations for the Caliphs delight. In this work, the boat is repurposed as a symbol of liberation and transition.

Through a repurposing of organ pipes, cymbals, vibrational coils and pneumatics, song, drone and vocal toning are combined with AI processing, to bring about a vibrational and generative reimagining of the original work. Referencing Sufi chanting, ecstatic poetics within mystical traditions, noise is explored for its trance inducing potential. 

 *Qiyān were a social class of women, trained as entertainers, which existed in the pre-modern Islamic world. Qiyān is often rendered in English as 'singing girls' or 'singing slave girls', but these translations do not reflect the fact that qiyān might be of any age, and were skilled entertainers whose training extended well beyond singing, including for example dancing, composing music and verse, reciting historical or literary anecdotes, calligraphy, or shadow-puppetry. 

Pure Dog, from mispronunciations series

Pure Dog

I’ve mistaken this heart for a dog

Everyday I've been asking for

a pure dog

a clear dog

a crystal dog

…

I sit and I wait and I watch

And nothing

Just a dogs wanting

Im trying patient longing

Then something, maybe

Something like a murmur

Or a melting drop landing

Enough to keep going

I’ve tried caressing and caring, tending, sharing

But I’m restless, waiting, clock watching

And I feel this ongoing, this dogged longing

Patience I'm trying

Ongoing, loyal following

Now I’m reaching, grasping and crawling

Downward doging

Arching and aching, this longing for something, keeps calling

These cares and worries and wantings

But nothing moves with the sound of stories, sorries and lorries

As were walking and walking down this narrow path

With dogged longings

Its ongoing

This waiting for the heart and the dog and you God.

قلب- Heart

كلب- Dog

Why does the sky rounding the mountains make itself hidden?

Out here on these waters, cold air circling

Light comes to us in blasts

Everything turns to breath, 

My childhood knew nothing of the power of women

I was blinded by images  

Now I resuscitate stories, planting flowers

Watering weeds

Infinity weighs heavy on the body

As do knotted timezones and histories yearnings

Through voices, distant and familiar, my hands get to work at weaving, shells, nettle, intestines  

To suggest a movement that reoccurs

Migrations that leak categories

I give into knot-knowing

I give into you and I

I am learning to speak my mothers-tongue

See a sculpture as it is, for what is

What a surprise! Birds mingling on a falling horizon 

A mirror casting back at you

When eyes are lifted, rare and giving

Everything changes as soon as it seen 

Materials, light, bodies and gazes, combine into fields

the air is agitated

And differences emerge from within