Sall Lam Toro – WATER STIRS OUR GRIEF: A CHOIR OF TEARS

A final work in progress sharing of a site specific sound installation with a live performance happening unfolds at the Community Kulturcentrum in Malmö on the 22nd May 2025 from 15:00 to 18:30. In collaboration with Alex and Jonas Snarl from the centre, Amalia Garay, Auria Paz and Skrot we stage the first chapter of Sall Lam Toro aka body_hacker’s thesis - “WATER STIRS OUR GRIEF: A CHOIR OF TEARS”. We invite you into an ecoerotic sonic meditation where an array of voices speak and scheme a garden into existence based on three acts:    

Act I - represents water as a primordial element of a (meta)physical garden of revolt; this act introduces embodied and unembodied characters that exchage poems amongst each other but also speak them from a same body. These fragments will be useful for further journeys we will take together.   

Act II – represents a water journey on the train between Copenhagen - Malmö where voices reflect on the oceanic water that lays under the öresund bridge as a sensuous body that evokes grieving modes due to border violence.  

Act III -  represents a water journey into the strait of Gibraltar in the atlantic ocean where orcas plot different throwings of boats ignited by the presence of millions of ghosts previously having lost their lives during the atlantic slave trade, and within modern migrating routes crossing the African and European continents. 

The sound weaves elements from specific locations, memories, nature elements, voices and an aspect of non-linear time where past, present and future blend and crossover. These sounds reflect erotic relationships between the inner livings of human and non-human bodies allowing the spectator to become a witness and an active participant of this universe.  

The performance aspect activates each of the areas of the sound installation with ritualistic acts, semi-improvised movement based on practices of body_hacking  - a movement practice and a modus operandi / a mode of embodiment of ecoeroticism that resists all the ways our bodies, our capacity to feel, sense and connect has been colonized and continuously hijacked under capitalism. Body_hacking attempts to connect the seen and the unseen, matter and ghosts, the sensuous, the metaphysical and the poetic into bodies.  

SCHEDULE

This is a durational performance. Doors open 15:00, you are welcome to come and go as you like until 18:30. At 15:00 - 15:25 there's a longer introduction, but you may also arrive later.

15:00-15:25 – Arrival and welcoming  - our host, Jonas will be introducing the space 
15:30 - 16:00 - Performance 1 
16:00-16:30 – Installation cycle 1 (wandering around the sound space areas) 
16:30 - 16:50 - Installation cycle 2 (wandering around the sound space areas) 
16:50 - 17:10 - Performance 2  
17:10 - 17:20 - Reprise of cycle 2 (wandering around the sound space areas) 
17:20 - 17:50 - Installation Cycle 3 (wandering around the sound space areas) 
17:50 - 18:30 - Performance 3  

AUDIENCE GUIDELINES  

You are invited to interact with the installation,  get your feet wet, vocalize and move with us. You may stay as long as you like between 15:00 and 18:30. One of the areas contains loud sound, we recommend bringing earplugs. 

DO NOT TOUCH THE PLANTS!!!!! 

Creator, writer, performer, direction, costume styling: Sall Lam Toro
Sound composition and engineering: Amalia Garay Lukacs and Auria Paz
Sound work support and scenography: SKROT
Choreographic consultant and support: Duo Mutsumineiro
Text feedback: Felica Mulinari
Conversation partners and interviews with: Auria Paz, Yancé-Myah Harrison, Bella Normark and RABELADES
Hosting and coordination support: CommunityKulturCentrum
Partners: Hosting Lands and CommunityKulturCentrum

BIO

(1990) Body_hacker (aka Sall Lam Toro) was born in Portugal and is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, working with immersive multimedia performance art, orchestrating sensuous meetings, entanglements and rituals between the human and non-human.  

They do so within the context of unnumbing and hacking bodies from everyday violent structures of modern capitalism and legacies of coloniality. This looks like involving the erotic, or, the sensuous (in an Audre Lorde type of way) as a way to confront alienation and illusions of separation in the modern living world between humans and non-humans. They also engage in community organizing around queer care work and autonomous living, and live and work collectively as part of queer housing and art collectives. 

www.bodyhacker.love  

Showings

Thursday 22 May 15:00-18:30 (durational performance)

Doors open 15:00, you are welcome to come and go as you like until 18:30. At 15:00 - 15:25 there's a longer introduction, but you may also arrive later.

Tickets: free admission, book your tickets at Billetto

Location: CommunityKulturCentrum, Lodgatan 3b, Malmö (Skånetrafiken bus 31 and 32 to Malmö Lodgatan)

This is a graduation work within the Masters Performing Arts as Critical Practice at Malmö Theatre Academy.