Helen Cammock: Che si può fare

Performance 

The expression of loss and mourning is central to the history of vocal music. Artist and winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2017-19 Helen Cammock creates a new performance exploring women’s laments across histories and geographies and how they might express survival and resilience.

During a residency in Italy, Cammock learnt to sing seventeenth-century Italian opera and was drawn to the plaintive words of Che si può fare (what can be done), an aria composed by Barbara Strozzi (1619 – 1677) and to the compositions of Francesca Caccini (1587 – 1641). Cammock sings Strozzi’s music with a jazz trumpeter to revive her legacy through her own voice, and performs in a movement piece set to music by Caccini with a group of local women to connect early Baroque-era lament with contemporary sorrows and resistance.

Thank you to Smrity Azad, Ella Belenky, Kim Dexter, Mac D’Silva, Delia Gaitskell, Nisha Halai, Tania Joseph, Daniele Lamarche, Jasmine Pajdak, Alma Ramnauth, Olivia Rowland, Aoife Scott, Deeksha Soni, Becky Warnock and choreographer Federica Parretti.