Prophecy of Place: On the Sofa at Vilnius (2011)
for video and electronics
12 minutes
Created by Quintan Ana Wikswo
Film, Photography, and Original Text: Quintan Ana Wikswo
Composers: Anne Le Berge and Pamela Madsen
Pianist: Pamela Madsen
Performance Premiere: Cal State Fullerton
Installation Premiere: Yeshiva University Museum
Program Notes
Quintan Ana Wikswo’s ON THE SOFA OF A SYNAGOGUE IN VILNIUS, 1923 is drawn from the oral history of a Holocaust survivor in Lithuania, whose romantic relationship with another woman was interrupted by the approach of genocide. A suite of interdisciplinary works in multi-panel photographs, film installations, original text, and live performance collaboration in dance, music, film and text, ON THE SOFA asks potent questions about the obscured sexual experiences of women during wartime.
Wikswo’s text first appeared in The Kenyon Review.
ON THE SOFA premiered in a solo exhibition and live performance in New York City at Yeshiva University Museum at the Smithsonian-affiliated Center for Jewish History, and continued on to the New Music Festival at Cal State University at Fullerton.
Special thanks to the Center for Cultural Innovation, the ARC/Durfee Grant, the Pollock-Krasner Fellowship at Yaddo, the Puffin Foundation, Yeshiva University Museum, Dragon’s Egg, Catalysis Projects, Ute Herreiner, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Oberpfaltzer Kunstlerhaus, Joanne Jacobson, and Zachary Levine.
Performances
August 14, 2011-February 2012 | Installation at Yeshiva University Museum, New York City