Prem Sahib, Alleus
with Edinburgh Art Festival
Presented and co-commissioned in partnership with Edinburgh Art Festival, Prem Sahib’s sound performance work Alleus had its Scottish premiere on 16 August 2024, following its first presentation with Somerset House Studios in March 2024.
Originally presented and co-commissioned with Somerset House Studios in London in March 2024, Alleus is Prem Sahib’s first performance using live vocals. The performance, whose title spells Suella backwards, re-orders, re-directs and disrupts an anti-immigration speech by former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, raising the question of how we approach the damaging language often echoed through society in hate speech.
For its Scottish iteration, the work was performed by the same live singers as during its premiere at Somerset House Studio’s Assembly, Woodsy Bransfield, Keziah Joseph and Rebecca Phillips, whose polyphony of voices diffused Braverman’s speech, together pre-recorded voices, and a backing track developed in collaboration with artist Woodsy Bransfield.
Alleus was presented in an underground public car park situated beneath Edinburgh Castle across two evening performances which formed part of the Edinburgh Art Festival’s 20th birthday edition.
This co-commission forms part of our mission to make performance more sustainable by presenting works more than once and to different audiences across the UK.
"Sahib’s greatest trick [...] is to make the audience part of the work, by positioning spectators on the steps of the spiral staircase overlooking the performance. [...] Sahib implicates the audience within the soundscape by making us constantly visible to one another. Braverman may have been sent to the opposition benches in the recent general election, but her rhetoric, resurrected and reshaped, persists. Alleus serves as a full-throated warning against complacency." (Frieze, September 2024)
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