Janice Kerbel works with a wide range of media including audio, print, radio plays and performance. Employing recognizable conventions from a variety of disciplines—from theatre to sport to music—Kerbel’s work inhabits existing structures while freeing them from their traditional use. In her work, events normally considered impossible to depict are given form that is both unexpected and strangely familiar.
Kerbel was nominated for her most recent work, DOUG, a musical composition in the form of nine songs for six voices. DOUG, the protagonist, moves through a choreographed history of imagined disaster, translating ‘accident’ into musical form. Voice, rhythmic verse and the structures inherent in music are used to give shape to the events that befall him. DOUG was commissioned by the Common Guild, Glasgow in 2014 and first staged at the Mitchell Library in May 2014.
Performed on the occasion of the Turner Prize, 2015 at Tramway, Glasgow, UK.
