KIRSTY FERGUSON-LEWIS
My Creative Project is a contemporary opera for three women titled Sirena. Sirena explores the concept of the siren, created by Homer in the Odyssey , perhaps the original and most famous representation of the feminine voice. The sirens have far departed from their original image – my contemporary take on this mythic creature aims to retell the story of a siren from my perspective as a woman, challenging the narrow view that the male gaze has affected on to the sirens and the treatment of the feminine voice.
In this essay I am going to discuss the themes that have influenced my creation of this work and that exist within it. These themes have an overarching theme of feminism, the voice and a focus on my relationship with the audience as a performer and composer.
Sirena grew from a desire to create performance-based work that incorporated my interests in vocal performance, opera, electronic music and the concept of the feminine voice. At the beginning of my Masters degree at Goldsmiths I created an immersive website called “cythereanbody.com” set in an imagined future where the population lives isolated in individual pods. The character I created for myself (Kri 2000) has the job of performing and entertaining online. The work features three embedded music videos including “Finance 300”.
I expanded this work when lockdown ended by creating a live performance of Cytherean Body and over the past two years have performed variations of it in art galleries as a kind of DIY one woman show. The location of the performance, the production and the presentation of the work are important elements in defining the work. By performing the show in art galleries and at private views I was defining my work as a kind of art piece.
Webpage: https://kirstyfergusonlewis.co.uk