Adam, Eve, Others and a UFO for Choral Octet
Join Focal Point Gallery at Clifftown Theatre in Southend-on-Sea on 5 July at 4pm for a performance of Adam, Eve, Others and a UFO for Choral Octet (2025), a newly commissioned audio installation and live performance by Haroon Mirza on the occasion of In Other Worlds: Acts of Translation, a group exhibition at Focal Point Gallery. A collaboration Roberts Institute of Art showcasing over 20 works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, this exhibition engages with the theme of translation – through storytelling and myth, history and memory, language and materials.
Before the performance there will be a curators’ tour of In Other Worlds: Acts of Translation at Focal Point Gallery, starting at 3pm.
Adam, Eve, Others and a UFO for Choral Octet is a ‘translation’ of a previous installation titled Adam, Eve, Others and a UFO (2013). Adam and Eve refer to the brands of speakers used in the installation and their names become the basis for a text exploring origin stories performed by actors from the local leading drama school East 15. The musical component of the piece will be performed by eight musicians, including soloist and advisor Juliet Fraser, with Sam Belinfante as musical director.
The “UFO” is not a flying saucer but a small octagonal LED circuit, like that of a bicycle light. Mirza deliberately plays on the titles’ evocation of the religious and otherworldly and, in his hands, the circuit becomes a medium for translating invisible energy into mysterious sounds. For this new work, signals are emitted by the UFO and translated into tones at musical octave intervals of 111Hz – a frequency long associated with both divine and bodily resonance – and sung by an eight-person choir.
We invite you to come and experience what begun as silent, electrical data becoming something sensorial, variable, even mystical, as the signals are translated into the complexity of the human voice.
With thanks to The Premises Studios and Studio Wayne McGregor.
Venue: Clifftown Theatre and Studios, Nelson Street Southend-on-Sea SS1 1EF