RIGA IFF: Monkas fragmenti

David C. Roberts, Billy Shebar
Monk in Pieces
Monk in Pieces
US, DE, FR
2025, 94’, en
Age 12+

 

Monk’s music was once said to “make cats bite each other”. Her impact on dance, theatre, performance art, sound-making, music videos and interdisciplinary practices isn't quite unrecognised – yet the attention it has received is not a lot. Coming from a migrant family, she made her mark in the male-dominated New York art scene of the late 1960s and early 70s. Developing throat singing, “voice as a universal language” techniques and a messenger’s philosophy, Monk gradually carved out her own space, and remains a high priestess of avant-garde art to this day.

 

Combining interviews, archival footage, animation and the unpredictability of form and expression so intrinsic to Monk, this moving-image mosaic covers over six decades of the artist’s creative journey across Cellular Songs and pleas On Behalf of Nature. Alongside the main character captured by directors Roberts and Shebar, we also meet her kindred spirits and creative partners – David Byrne, Björk, Philip Glass and many others for whom music, movement scores and contemporary art are unthinkable without her. The film has been screened at a number of prestigious festivals – Berlinale, Thessaloniki, Hong Kong and beyond. Documenting Monk’s latest work, the performance Indra’s Net, Monk is confronted with mortality: is there any one of her pieces that can be repeated without her presence? Does art lose its resonance once its creator is gone?