LONDON.- Recitations of grief and mourning recorded on the occasion of the London performance of Taryn Simon’s An Occupation of Loss will be released on limited-edition vinyl on 16 September 2019, published by The Vinyl Factory.

Co-commissioned by Artangel and Park Avenue Armory, An Occupation of Loss was first presented in September 2016 at Park Avenue Armory, New York. The London performance took place in April 2018 below Islington Green in a cavernous concrete space selected for its unusual sonic properties.

In An Occupation of Loss, professional mourners simultaneously broadcast their lamentations, many of which trace their origins to pre-Islamic and pre-Christian times, enacting rituals of grief. Their sonic mourning was performed in recitations that include Northern Albanian laments, which seek to excavate “uncried words”; Wayuu laments, which safeguard the soul’s passage to the Milky Way; Greek Epirotic laments, which bind the story of a life with its afterlife; and Yazidi laments, which map a topography of displacement and exile.

Discontent is publicly performed in the act of lamentation. Throughout history, professional mourners have been granted the authority to occupy, negotiate, and shape the experience of loss. Despite this authority, mourners have often been marginalised by governments, economic systems and orthodoxy. An Occupation of Loss considers the anatomy of grief and the intricate systems we devise to manage the abstract certainty of death.

The double album includes both live recordings made during the London performance and studio recordings of each lament performed by the professional mourners who collaborated on the London performance. The accompanying 80-page book presents the laments, their English translations, and Simon’s portraits of the performers. A section documenting the performers’ visa application processes foregrounds the underlying structures of global exchange, the movement of bodies across borders, and the hierarchies of art and culture. A special 350-copy Art Edition features a collection of photographs taken by the mourners.

Taryn Simon (b. 1975) is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, text, sculpture and performance. Her works have been the subject of exhibitions at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (2016-17); The Albertinum, Dresden (2016); Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2016); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2016); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2015); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2013); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); Tate Modern, London (2011); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2011); and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007).

Permanent collections include Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles. Her work was included in the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Simon’s installation, An Occupation of Loss (2016), co-commissioned by Park Avenue Armory and Artangel, premiered in New York in 2016. She is a graduate of Brown University and a Guggenheim Fellow. She lives and works in New York.

An Occupation of Loss was co-commissioned by Artangel and New York’s Park Avenue Armory.