Song of the Union

Info

• Title : Song of the Union

• Year : 2021

• Medium : Installation with multichannel sound and vinyl record.

• Duration : Variable.

Details

Song of the Union is a multichannel sound installation that reimagines a defining political moment through the elemental medium of the human voice. The work takes its point of departure from 29 January 2020, when the European Parliament closed the United Kingdom’s final session with an unexpected gesture: Members of Parliament stood, joined hands, and sang Auld Lang Syne as a farewell. Broadcast worldwide, the moment carried a mixture of grief, defiance, and fragile hope at the threshold of Brexit.

Twelve days later, inside Burns Monument in Edinburgh, Ogboh conceived Song of the Union. He invited one EU citizen from each of the twenty-seven member states living in Scotland, alongside one voice from the UK, to sing Auld Lang Syne in their own languages. Many of the participants had been excluded from voting in the 2016 referendum despite living and working in the UK; the installation offers their voices a space to be heard.

Recorded in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 2021, the voices are arranged through a custom software system that determines how they enter, overlap, and recede. No two listenings are the same. As individual languages emerge and dissolve into a shared sonic field, the work forms an acoustic commons, transforming a song of parting into a living meditation on unity, divergence, and belonging.

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