2025
Video Installation, Sound, Performance, Photography
Supported by Island Connect Residency (Theatre Alibi Bastia, Creative Europe ,and Nordic Culture Point)
Blending Corsican polyphonic singing traditions, the sonic rhythm of the Bastia lighthouse, and fictional monologues by present-day Corsican residents imagining themselves as birds across centuries of local history, this work explores the emotional geographies of colonial islands through multi-layered voice and vision.
Artist and vocalist Tianjun Li experiments with human voice, archival echoes, and AI-generated landscapes, constructing a speculative narrative of identity, exile, and memory. Through the lighthouse’s frequency, the singing voices of four Corsicans intertwine with audiovisual textures, becoming frequencies of loss, migration, and transformation.
This chapter is part of the larger project Free as Birds, and takes form as a video installation, performance, and photographic work: imagining flight as both myth and method for survival.
Contextual Note / Artistic Background
On Corsica and Polyphony
Corsica has a long tradition of polyphonic singing, historically performed by men in religious or social rituals. These vocal textures are not only aesthetic expressions but also carriers of collective memory and resistance, especially in relation to the island's colonial past and its tensions between Corsican, French, and Italian identities.
On the Lighthouse and Exile
The Bastia Lighthouse becomes a metaphorical and sonic axis in this chapter. Historically, lighthouses on island frontiers have guided both ships and stories of departure. In this work, its rhythm becomes a heartbeat of temporal layering—of migration, exile, and imagined returns.
On the Birds and Fictional Monologues
The bird is a recurring figure throughout the Free as Birds project, symbolizing the fluidity of borders, displacement, and ancestral voice. The four fictional monologues in this chapter are performed by contemporary Corsican residents, who reflect on what it means to be “as birds”—to carry histories, memories, and echoes beyond geography and time.
On Language and Voice
Languages spoken in the work—Corsican, French, Italian—reflect the layered histories of power, identity, and resistance.