"Počimalja – she who starts the song" (2022)
Video: 11 min 30 sec, kinetic object: copper, tin, mechanics, electronics, wood
Počimalja is based on the exploration of the folk musical practice of tepsijanje (“panning”) practiced in the Balkan region. In patriarchal communities that generally discouraged female public performance, without access to “proper” instruments and confined to the domestic realm, women often emancipated household objects, such as the pan (tepsija), giving them the status of instruments. Tepsijanje is practiced by manually turning a shallow copper pan on its vertical axis while projecting the singing voice into the centre of the spinning pan.
The artist focuses on the acoustic qualities of the pan as an idiophone instrument and on singing with and into the pan, thus looking at the formal, aesthetic, and socio-anthropological implications of the practice. Staking a bold artistic intervention within the tradition, Počimalja addresses histories of creativity, perseverance, resistance, and communities – tacitly inspiring strategies of reinvention in societies on the brink of implosion.
Lala Raščić is fascinated with both tangible and immaterial cultural formulae and their transformative potential.
/ Photo credit: Kristīne Madjare / Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art