"Appel à tous. Ceci est notre dernier cri avant notre silence éternel." - Calling all, this is our final cry before our eternal silence
A few years ago when I was at the Orange Regional Art Galley, I came across this fascinating artwork comprising music, movement and sound. Initially I didn't understand it at all but found it intriguing, so I read the information panel that accompanied the artwork. I discovered it to be about Morse code and other forms of communication - a subject that interests me deeply, so I spent some time in the gallery interacting with the artwork. The following words are from the information panel.
Relay League, a term for a telegraphic transmission from one receiver to the next, takes as its departure point a Morse code message transmitted by the French Navy on 31 January 1997 to signal the imminent demise of this communication method. Morse code, a system of dot and dash radio signals, often utilised as a language of distress at sea, was phased out after 130 years in favour of new digital communications. Inspired by this final poetic phase, Mesiti interprets its original dots and dashed through music, choreography, and non-verbal communication.
The first of the three-channel works features the musician-composer Uriel Barthélémi translating the Morse code message into a percussive score that permeates throughout the gallery. The second shows a unique form of dialogue and exchange between two dancers, Emilia Wibron Vesterlund and vision-impaired Sindri Runudde. Together the pair has developed an intimate and corporeal language that communicates movement and gesture. Emilia guides Sindri's understanding of choreography through the touch and feel of her body against his.
The third depicts the dancer Filipe Lourenço interpreting Uriel's percussive sounds in a new choreography that directly references silence and vision through gestures loosely drawn from the vernacular of folk dance. This final work reveals a dialogue playing out between each of the performers, and the dots and dashes transmitted throughout the gallery produce a subtle dissonance so that the work continually slips back and forth between cohesion and dissolution. Relay League leaves a sensory impression of a language that has been transformed into a code, which in turn iterates as a score, a performance and a haptic exchange, enabling multiple acts of translation across time and space.
Mesiti's practice chronicles our present condition. She continues to grapple with experiences such as crisis and displacement - whether economic, political, social, cultural, or otherwise - and confront the emotional states of distress, vulnerability and uncertainty. Relay League involves a fundamental humility, bringing to the surface aspects of human subjectivity that are often obscured from view. To this end the work offers a counterpoint: more than simply making visible the forms through which language and expression are silenced, she allows these complex and vital tools of human relations to materialise in ways that emphasis our need for empathy, compassion and connection.
Morse code was used as an international standard for maritime distress until 1999 when it was replaced by the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System. The final commercial Morse code transmission in the United States was on July 12, 1999, signing off with Samuel Morse's original 1844 message, 'What hath God wrought'. Everything sounds better in French (the distress signal Mayday comes from the phonetic equivalent of them asking for help, after all). And for those wanting a proper review of the art installation, there is one here, written by an art critic who understands these things.
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