We Will Slam You With Our Wings

WE WILL SLAM YOU WITH OUR WINGS is an operatic video and sound installation comprising seven portrait sized screens, each a 19th century colonial imperialistic portrait with one noticeable difference. Instead of powerful men, six young girls between the age of 8 to 16 stand in their regalia and hold their own stances of power. These young girls are the leaders, the army, the chorus, the pack, the collective and the future voice. Joanna Dudley, the performer known for her ground-breaking collaborations with William Kentridge, is the chieftain and mentor, encouraging the girls to create the world afresh.Dudley turns that quintessential 19th century form – opera – on its head: each girl proudly and unnervingly conquers as she recreates an operatic death scene representing the squirming heights of patriarchal fantasy. Rather than being destroyed as expected, they triumph. Patriotic speeches and declarations of war from the world’s male dictators are not left unscathed.