2004, 110 minutes, 5 DVD installation
LYRIC features the performance of a sung narrative comprised of sound bites collected from lyrics of one thousand love songs. Familiar lyrics were isolated, sampled and arranged into a series of hybrid theme-based songs, then sung as a classical song cycle in an epic solo performance.
The focus is on commonly heard lyrics, lines that reproduce banal, hegemonic concepts of love and relationships, “I will love you forever” and “I would die without you”.
The video engages on a musicological level while also revealing a sense of human endurance, a physicality that reflects exhaustion from the act of marathon singing, the act of consuming mass quantities of pop music and the act of loving.
LYRIC is designed for looped installation divided among five monitors, and its unconventional narrative structure allows viewers to join or leave the story at any time.
Lyric is accompanied by LIBRETTO, an editioned artist book providing the complete song texts from LYRIC.
