25/05/2026
Amorphous Resonance
This installation extends artist, John Robbertse’s investigation into fluid identity within contemporary South Africa through a collaborative act. As Head Curator of the Franco Prinsloo Arts Collective (FPAC), Robbertse invited members of the Vox Chamber Choir to contribute personal glass objects. Each object enters the space marked by use, memory, and inheritance; vessels of private ritual and collective history. Their material condition is central: glass holds, preserves, and fractures. It endures, yet remains perpetually at risk.
Glass functions here as both medium and metaphor. It refracts, distorts, and reflects without fully disclosing. In parallel, memory operates as a shifting construct; partial, unstable, and continually reassembled. The installation does not resolve these tensions; it holds them in suspension.
Developed in close dialogue with Glasmusiek, performed by the Vox Chamber Choir at the Fairtree Atterbury Teater/Theatre, the installation extends beyond the visual into the sonic. Forty choristers perform on tuned glasses, activating fragile vessels as instruments. Drawing on Ernst van Heerden’s poem "Musiek" , the gesture invokes the moment where brittle matter is made to resonate; where fragility becomes sound.
A central proposition emerges: contemporary life itself may be understood through the condition of glass. Marked by fracture, pressure, and instability, yet still capable of resonance. The work resists closure, instead proposing care as a mode of engagement; a way of holding what might otherwise break.
The audience is not external to the work. Visitors are invited to activate tuned glasses within the installation, contributing to an evolving field of sound. These gestures accumulate into a collective composition, extending authorship beyond the artist and performers. Additional layers of meaning are accessible through QR-linked narratives, situating each object within its personal context.
The installation operates as a spatial and sonic extension of the performance. It does not illustrate the work on stage; it continues it. What is seen, heard, and touched forms part of a single inquiry into fragility, memory, and the conditions under which something delicate might still endure and resonate.
