Not only a medical symptom but a vast metaphor for disorientation of all kinds, vertigo describes the moment when reliable bearings dissolve and equilibrium becomes unanchored. This sensation comes sooner and more readily to some than others; to those whose bodies, identities, or social positions have never been granted the luxury of a steady foundation. For 3hd’s Shifting Ground performance programme, Lewis Walker and Johanna Hedva co-headline at HAU Hebbel am Ufer to explore how inheritance becomes transformation in the search for a solid self on unstable terrain.
For their new theatrical work, Johanna Hedva performs songs from the forthcoming, unreleased album “Fist”. The piece marks their debut collaboration with opera director George R. Miller who stages what might be the afterlife – eerie, void-like. White feathers, black goo. A mattress turned upside down. Written on a haunted acoustic guitar that disappeared for ten years and then returned overnight, the songs from “Fist” conjure “dominatrix blues,” “bog-witch lullabies,” and “succubus folk.” Hedva’s trademark voice, trained in opera and Korean P'ansori, slides between croaks, growls, and strange serenades that slouch toward intimacy. The songs hold doomed lament, dismembered body parts, murderous rage, and, of course, ordinary swampy heartbreak with men on their knees. Desire is ruinous – it has ruined everything.
