1000 Foundlings Find Their Mothers
Installation with paintings, choral music, dialogue and animated projection. 2015.
Dimly lit paintings hangs to correspond with their animated projections within a darkened space. Gradually glowing with light, they breath, sing, interact and tell stories. The choral arrangement of a traditional Sephardic lullaby (sung by Kate Bush and Martin Heidegger with babies, cats, dogs and various other odd couples/ groups) was created in collaboration with composer Teresa Chung.
‘1000 Foundlings Find their Mothers’, was a well documented, influential, post-industrial, pre-enlightenment movement led by scores of the socially abandoned who took laughter as their mother. A popular charter presented to the house was later dismissed on the grounds that no concrete evidence yet existed for the movement's social efficiency.
English translation of lullaby-
‘Sleep my dear little child, sleep without worry or pain. You will come out of your swaddling clothes and you will go to school. My dear little child, you will learn your ABC. You will leave the school and you will go to the square. Yai, my dear little child, you will learn to be a merchant. You will leave the square you will go on to further study. Yai, my dear little child then you will be the best’.
Written and directed by Lexi Strauss
Music direction Lexi Strauss and Teresa Chang.
Choral arrangement/ recording of traditional lullaby- Teresa Chang.
Performed by Teresa Chang, Wilf George and Lexi Strauss.
Diologue- Tamiko Kushikara, Wilf George, Morgan George, Seongjin Huh, Eleanor Pratt, Katrine Roberts, Marlene Steyn, Vivien Zhang and Mariya Zherdeva.