attentions

attentions is the premiere of a live audio-visual concept album by Harilay Rabenjamina. An absorbing performance that traverses familial, intimate and political registers, it stages attentive modes fluctuating from introspective drift to imperative focus. The music is performed live with Thelia.

The work journeys between London, Paris, Antananarivo, and Pessac, moving through shifting voices and registers to explore forms of mobility across places, genres, and modes of expression. Voices are constantly transformed, filtered as if heard through phone calls, radio transmissions or in-flight announcements, while short anecdotes and reflections punctuate the album.

Part cinematic performance and part pop concert, attentions blends pop, ambient, R&B love songs, and classical influences, with narrative script and self-directed video. Rabenjamina approaches attention as both a state of focus or vigilance and as a force that can be given, withheld, exhausted, or shared, something that is constantly captured and redirected by competing pressures.

This event is part of Shortwave, a new festival of sound and performance, unfolding across four independent venues in south east London. Bringing together international and local artists, musicians and DJs, the festival spans two nights of commissioned live works, experimentation and performance.

Shortwave creates spaces where sound becomes a conduit for connection—between disciplines and communities. It celebrates experimental practices while amplifying diverse voices and perspectives.

Produced in dialogue with Rabenjamina’s performance, Shortwave continues with the night programme at ORMSIDE Projects. Brief Encounters and Kindred Spirits present a series of sonic experimentation and left-field club transmission, reverberating the space between inner worlds and the dance floor. Across ambient collage, speculative narrative and low-end club pressure, the programme unites artists who treat sound as a portal for memory, fiction and transformation. On 9 May, South London Gallery will present a new performance piece by Krystle Patel followed by a night at IKLECTIK, where Joshua Woolford, I Am Fya, and K’BOKO each offer distinct approaches to sound as an embodied and spatial practice.

Performance Duration: Approx 75 mins

Access info: Performance contains some flashing lights, amplified sound, and haze.