The official trailer for The Moment, the new A24 movie starring Charli XCX during a satirical version of her Brat era, dropped earlier this month, renewing interest in the musician’s cinematic breakout in 100 Nights Of Hero, a farcical fairy tale released at the latest Venice International Film Festival. In that film, the star plays a striking instrument that may have caught the eye of fans of sound art: a sculptural harp by the artist Amanda Camenisch.
The London-based photographer, filmmaker, and performer is perhaps best known for her sonic sculptures—hand-forged, alien-looking music-makers that facilitate what she calls “participatory rituals.”
The piece played by Charli XCX is titled Elemental Harp: Fire, or the “Fire Harp,” and was commissioned by the London Brent Biennial in 2022. The harp is one of a family of five instruments in dialogue with the elemental forces—earth, water, air, fire, and ether (the last is a colorless, highly flammable liquid once used to describe the upper reaches of the sky). Each piece is hand-sculpted by Camenisch.
For Air, the metal was shaped with the body’s form in mind, gently arcing like a silver swan’s neck or an archer’s bow drawn taut. Fire Harp suits the mythic-medieval setting of 100 Nights well. The strings are drawn across the flat face. The pear-shaped body can be played astride one’s lap or standing, like a lute or loom.
“These works began as woven sculptural forms and gradually evolved into sound-healing instruments made for the Asian Women’s Resource Centre’s women’s shelter,” Camenisch told ARTnews. “Over the course of a year, the women learned to play them, becoming both guardians and practitioners of these tools, offering meditative sound journeys to one another.”
The sculptures appeared in Camenisch’s 2023 exhibition at the Metroland London, “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but not the ripples of the time,” created in collaboration with Therese Westin as part of the Brent Biennial Community Commission. The pair invited visitors to play the sound sculptures, and hopefully tap into the weaving of worship, nature, and art-making. That’s where Ellen Amann Johns, the assistant art director of the film, discovered the harps.
“The series emerged from many years of research and practice in vibrational healing, exploring how sound resonates through the body and how particular frequencies affect physiological and energetic systems,” Camenisch said. During that time, she developed an alternative tuning system based on the Kabbalistic sephiroth, the ten channels according to the Jewish mysticism through which transcendent forces meet and illuminate the physical realm. Nature is one such structural force, according to some literature.
It’s fair then to interpret these instruments as conduits, “mapping tonal relationships onto physical and symbolic correspondences,” per the artist. “Each instrument is shaped to meet the body directly, allowing the vibration of the steel to travel into specific regions, supporting activation, nourishment, and restoration.
