breath, heart beats, performance

Double Beat

This performance is for a pregnant woman. During the performance, the woman inflates plastic bags with her breath. By inflating the bags, the sound of heart beats becomes audible. The woman’s heart beats as well as the heart beats of the unborn infant are picked up each by a so-called fetal Doppler device. The more bags have been inflated, the longer and louder these heart beats sound. At the end of the performance the heart beats are slowly transformed by each breath into musical chords, derived from the Cold Genius’ solo in the “Frost Scene” of the opera King Arthur (1691) by Henry Purcell, a piece about death.

performance pregnant hear beat
double beat performance pregnancy heart beats