On the 6th of June, as part of Digbeth First Friday, Grand Union Gallery celebrated the opening of its newest exhibition – Gut Feelings 2.0 by artist Kasra Jalilipour. While the exhibition itself is rich in content, using a variety of sculptural and digital practices to explore the relationships between queer identities with Iran’s religious history, I found myself resonating most with the soundscape – more specifically, the music of Gisou Golshani, whose work features in the exhibition and who performed live at the opening.

During the event, swaying slightly from the heat of so many bodies, I found myself unwilling to leave the space – too immersed by Golshani’s performance, a weaving of transient drones with vocal refrains. Through repeated vocal chants, alongside the pitch manipulation of her vocals, the piece created the sensation of collective mantras, emerging from a united voice. 

Jalilipour’s art, independently, embellishes Grand Union with shared experiences of the past and present: some of the most iconic parts of the exhibition are his holographic busts, depicting various contemporary artists – like Sevin Shabankareh and Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda – alongside the Iranian poet Tahirih Qurrat al-’Ayn, who was martyred in 1855. Enhanced by its surroundings, the soundscape feels remarkably universal; the intimacy of Golshani’s music extended across not only language, but centuries of poetry and performance. As their voice enveloped itself, became voices, the piece became even more of a sensory conversation.

Perhaps a good reason for my interpretations of the event is that it reminded me of the 1992 film Orlando – in mind due to its screening on the 21st of June, thanks to Screen B14. Composed by David Motion and the film’s director Sally Potter, plenty of the music present in Orlando explores similar conversations of gender; over centuries, we chart a history of androgynous performances, from castrato singers of the 16th-18th Centuries to the appearance of the (literally!) angelic Jimmy Somerville, during the film’s opening and closing credits. 

One track in particular – The Kiss – stood out in my first watch. Playing over a scene where Tilda Swinton’s Orlando (currently male in the film’s narrative) kisses Charlotte Valandrey’s Sasha, The Kiss is made up of overlapping murmurs  – breathy, soft – over a chopped drone (that, itself, sounds like a human voice). The blending of these voices pinpoints a moment of connection, not just between Orlando and Sasha, but of desire across centuries – from Orlando to Virginia Woolf to Swinton to Potter. Almost muses of the story, the soundtrack’s voices direct us further and further to emotive responses, exploring Orlando’s life through queer intimacy first and foremost. 

Golshani’s performance and The Kiss affected me in the same way because of a desire to push further. In both performances the singing is beautiful, but neither revels in that status alone. Instead, the performances transform the voice into something more, something beyond its time and existence. Centuries blend into one, histories unite.

Maybe it’s the rising temperatures as we enter the summer; maybe it’s the exhaustion under a government that builds more and more of a wall against trans lives each day; maybe it’s the relief of exhibitors in Birmingham giving the space to art that explores genderqueerness. Whatever it is, I just can’t help but feel like fainting into these sounds.

---

‘Gut Feelings 2.0’ is available to see at Grand Union Gallery until Saturday 16th August – see more information on the exhibition here.

To catch ScreenB14’s next screening, follow them on Instagram

Jacob makes a comment pertaining to the EHRC’s recent attempts to relinquish trans people’s rights in the UK. If you want to help counter these attempts, attend the EHRC-U-Next-Tuesday Event at the Hare and Hounds on Tuesday 24th June.