Ida Sophia: VERSE

℣ You, sent out beyond your recall.
℟ I go to the limits of my longing.
℣ Embody me.
℟ I flare up like a flame.
– Rainer Maria Rilke

VERSE is a new performance work by contemporary artist Ida Sophia. Featuring an experimental sound work by Joseph James Francis, accompanied by Sonya Mellor on cello.

Perpetual actions of vain hope drive the durational live performance VERSE. A passage in an anthem, a verse articulates one part of a greater whole. The poem Go to the limits of your longing by German poet Rilke, is arranged here in responsorial format; I converse with Rilke. I traverse space. I reverse memory. Repetitious circumambulation (the act of walking around a sacred object) and spoken word enact the idea that textual recall, combined with action, can revise emotional associations to memory; reminding us, in Rilke’s words: no feeling is final.

As a child, Ida vainly hoped to reclaim her Father’s favouritism when he dedicated himself to Religion. Despite knowing she was not religious, she performed diligently as if she was. In an ongoing series of performances titled HOPE DIES LAST (the first, Witness, 2022) Ida re-examines the religious actions she performed then, considering how they imposed a self-contradictory barrier to regaining the love she perceived lost.

Please note, you can exit and return to the performance throughout the 6-hour period. Tea will be served. 

VERSE is a Post Office Projects special project, the first in the 2023 POP Performance Series.

Due to building restraints, the work will be staged at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental.

Feature Image: Ida Sophia, 'Verse' (2023), digital image. Courtesy the artist and Post Office Projects.