Two boy sopranos perform a duet amid low-slung sculptures made from stones that function as choral risers. In the span of fifteen minutes, the boys hurl adversarial language at each other culled from literary sources ranging from Cicero to Shakespeare. The beauty of the music, arranged by composer Guarionex Morales-Matos, disguises the verbal forms of conflict, which evoke the tone of much political discourse today. The work’s title plays up the multiple meanings of such opposition: a fault line is a geological fracture where the movement of masses of rock has displaced parts of the earth’s crust. Here, it alludes to the tension between geological time and the brief period when the boys’ singing can reach a high pitch before their voices break, as well as the breakdown of social order.
Gallery label from 2019
