Canticle of Innocent

Canticle of Innocent is a dark ambient audiovisual performance conceived as a wordless requiem, a sonic and visual meditation on Palestinian collective trauma, guided not by narrative, but by evocation.

Inspired by Martha Graham's Canticle for Innocent Comedians and her poetics of spiritual devastation, the performance unfolds in two movements: first, the elements of nature (earth, water, air, fire), which in the present have become symbols of mourning, resistance, and denial; then, the stars (sun, moon, and stars), which become indifferent witnesses and burning bodies, until the final stage: death.

The audio, composed and performed live by Motja using processed field recordings and the SOMA Terra electroacoustic instrument, emerges from a physical and intuitive interaction with sound, unplanned, but listened to and modulated in real time. The visuals, a fluid dialogue between pre-recorded imagery and generative material, mirror this same quality: not constructed, but summoned.

Canticle of Innocent does not seek explanation. It asks only for the willingness to contemplate, from a distance, what cannot be understood, only felt.