Making a Mountain

Making a Mountain is a performance research project by Toni Brell, to be developed during a research residency at workspacebrussels. Working with voice, movement and porcelain horn-instruments, Brell explores how vocal expression can give form to emotional experiences.

The research brings together mountainous landscapes, alpine sound practices, folklore around echoes, with research into neurodivergent listening. It follows the voice as it moves between speech, song, murmurs, and cries, becomes fragmented or falls away. Echoes and stories of voices travelling between worlds offer a starting point for exploring vulnerability, grief and heightened states of perception.

The horn enters this research as an extension of the body and voice. In myth and folklore, it can announce change, connect different worlds or give a voice to what is absent. Brell’s porcelain horns become a means of exploring these associations through breath, resonance and gesture. They can be sounded, held, touched or listened through, creating relationships between bodies, objects and space.

At workspacebrussels, Brell will work together with performer camilla strandhagen and composer Mira Thompson, to explore material for a performance.