Watch Heather Leigh's video Response To A Request: An Interpretation Of Helga Fassonaki's Visual Score Hair Porn For The Khal Project
Response To A Request is a video made by pedal steel player Heather Leigh as part of Termas, her duo with a mannequin called Lynda. The request Termas are responding to came from Helga Fassonaki aka Yek Koo (one half of psych duo Metal Rouge) for her project Khal. Fassonaki’s project stems from a post-1979 Iranian revolutionary law forbidding women from singing solo in public due to the female voice being deemed seductive. Fassonaki wrote 16 visual scores and sent them to artists outside Iran to interpret and perform. Alongside Heather Leigh, they included Jenny Gräf, Chiara Giovando, Christina Carter, Ashley Paul, Matana Roberts, and others.
Stewart Smith discusses the project with Heather Leigh in The Wire 381:
“The idea of communing with a younger self also comes through in Termas, her duo with Lynda, a mannequin she considers as a collaborator and a shadow self”, Smith explains. “Leigh has made a short film, Response To A Request, interpreting Helga Fassonaki’s visual score Hair Porn. The film captures an intimate scene, with Leigh tenderly brushing Lynda’s hair by the fireplace. It’s very loving, sisterly even. I wonder if this fits in with Leigh’s notion of communing with her past self. ‘There’s an intimacy there, definitely,’ she [Leigh] says. ‘Lynda is complicated, there’s a lot of things going on there. I definitely see her as a kind of a shadow of myself, a younger self, but also this kind of archetype for a female I’ve always had in my life growing up. All my friends growing up were these dark haired girls and later women. There’s a real Lynda, a childhood friend.’”
More information on Heather Leigh can be found at her website, and you can read the full article in The Wire 381 in print or online with a digital subscription.
