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one lighted look for me – commissioned by Historic Royal Palaces for the Tower Of London – Beyond the Deepening Shadow The Tower Remembers, Armistice 100 Commemoration

written and produced by Mira Calix
lyrics by Mary Borden
performed by Solomon’s Knot, conducted by Esmeralda Conde Ruiz

As the nation commemorates the centenary of the end of the First World War, a new installation at the Tower of London, Beyond the Deepening Shadow: The Tower Remembers fills the moat with light and sound for 8 consecutive days (4-11 November 2018). Mira Calix has been specially commissioned by the Historic Royal Palaces to create the sound installation that will accompany the thousands of individual flames that will fill the Tower’s moat each night. Calix’s new work is a sonic exploration of the shifting tide of political alliances, of unity and division, and of love and loss in war.

Calix’s installation, is a sonic exploration of the shifting tide of political friendships. Friendship circles are formed around common ground and shared interests. Over time, these clusters expand, contract and shift. Alliances in their very nature are segmented, and within unity there is always division. Her armistice sound artwork reflects on her premise that when we become divided, what unites us is a common loss.

She has created an intimate and sensory promenade piece, which transforms the moat into a participatory sound installation. At the centre of this sound installation lies a new choral work, with a text by the inimitable suffragette war poet Mary Borden; Sonnets to a Soldier III.

one lighted look for me is the predominant english language version of the work, in the tower we hear two other scores, vicissitude of the united, and vicissitude of the divided, which are sung in the languages of the participating nations signed up to the Triple Entente and Central Power in the early days of WW1.

“i am so grateful to Mary Borden’s heirs and her publisher Dale Gale Press, who responded so generously in my request to use her text for this new choral work. I felt instinctively, that this sonnet, by being so personal, had a universality, It so eloquently expressed my wider concepts of loss at the heart of my sound installation. To me, Mary feels not only like a writer,  a woman of her time, but of mine to.  I have been an admirer of not only her work, but her humanitarian endeavors for some time, this woman is all round inspiring! i  am delighted in that , the world seems to have woken up to her extraordinary talent. If i have played some small part in this, i couldn’t be more pleased. All to often female artists, have been removed from the cannon, their great work uncredited, recognition denied. ”
Mira Calix