Gravitational Shift manifests itself in many different forms: a performative choir piece, workshops, an album release performed by opera singers among others, a song book, an installation etc. The work aims to explore the potentials of collectivising lonely and isolating pain and trauma experiences.

The composition is based on sound recordings of women’s birth sounds, which are time-stretched and transcribed to extract the melody of horror and pain — a melody that the composition accesses through communal singing in order to dialogue with the terrifying instead of reproducing its affect. It is therefore an elongated, beautiful and meditative expression that contrasts with the composition’s immediately dramatic starting point.

The concept behind Gravitational Shift is developed in dialogue with visual artist Marie Kølbæk Iversen.