In her book Sensing Sound (2015), vocal scholar Nina Sun Eidsheim writes that the voice is constructed by both listener and speaker and that we are all connected in and through sound. Sun Eidsheim conceives the sonic being as a multi-sensory phenomenon, consisting of tactile, spatial, physical and vibrational sensations. Trained as a classical cellist, Peter Scherrebeck Hansen makes performances in which voice and body are deployed ‘in-between the contours of things’. Their installation in Syb entitled SOUVENIR [suv(ə)niʀ] is an example of how sound, especially voice, can feel penetrating and tangible. With this work, the artist explores the resonance of sound from body to body, and from a large vase to the space around it (also referred to by the artist as para-space). How do memories and traumas resonate from body to body? Two figures sing in each other’s mouths a song about seeking refuge. The video can be seen and heard from the bottom of a large vase (originally constructed by a ceramist during the performance of a stage version of the work). SOUVENIR [suv(ə)niʀ] is accompanied by photographs of Scherrebeck Hansen’s mother–a nurse with clairvoyant capacities–from a time when she went into hiding from an ex-partner, and photos of a performative intervention staged by the artist at the same place forty years later.
Peter Scherrebeck Hansen graduated from SNDO, School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam University of the Arts in 2022. Peter is a cellist, video artist and choreographer, who works from a queer feminist perspective. In their choreographic work Peter researches and carves out what they name “the paraspace” — a space for liminal beings of different times. Peter creates choreographic tableaux which dialogue between video, ceramics, voice and the praxis of calling upon and embodying female figures. With a starting point from the physical body and somatic practices, Peter is aiming to create choreographic containers for private and collective memories and their residues. A praxis where the body becomes a choreographic container itself.
