First Breath with NYX

To mark the opening of V&A East Museum, the experimental vocal collective NYX responds to the Why We Make galleries through a series of acoustic vocal interventions unfolding across multiple levels of the building. Moving between solo voices and small ensembles, visitors are invited to sound the new museum into being.

Conceived as a live, site-specific work, First Breath  responds directly to the galleries’ central proposition: making as a powerful, collective act capable of shaping how we live, care, dissent and imagine futures. 

Through an immersive sonic journey Sian O'Gorman, Rachel Oyawale, AK Paterson, Plumm, afromerm, Rhianna Compton, Bones Tan Jones, Katya Barton, Monique Salle, Ushara Dilrukshan, Trans Chorus, Alicia Jane Turner and Damsel Elysium, invite you to explore the human voice as a primary technology, one of the earliest tools through which people have told stories, passed knowledge, expressed belief, organised resistance and cared for one another.

Alongside these musical activations, NYX and creative collaborators will host participatory workshops exploring vocal embodiment, intuitive singing and collective drone practice. As the sun begins to set, the day gathers on the top floor, and a Drone Circle begins. You can join in, move through it, or simply listen as voices build and the space fills with sound. 

What begins as a breath becomes a vibration, then a presence, carried across bodies and across the building itself. A shared beginning held in common, discovering why we make, together.

Full programme details and booking information for the workshops will be released soon.
Filming and photography will take place at this event.
If you have any access requirements, please let us know in advance by emailing accessibility@vam.ac.uk