Not A Word From MeLucy Railton with Charlie Hope (Light Design) and Rebecca Salvadori (Film)
Not A Word From Me is a new live performance by cellist and electronic composer Lucy Railton, created in collaboration with video artist Rebecca Salvadori and light designer Charlie Hope.
Developed at ICA London and premiered at CTM Festival in Berlin in 2024, the performance builds on over a decade of creative exchange and friendship between the three artists. Drawing from Railton’s latest body of work, Not A Word From Me creates a permeating environment where sound, gesture, image, and light respond to each other, directed by an ever-evolving sensual gravitas.
Railton’s use of cello, electronics, and amplified objects catalyses a multidirectional soundscape through minimal yet magnetic gestures, expanding the spatial focus and material tension of her practice into “a loud whisper.” Each moment arises through synchronicity with Salvadori’s live projections—blending her signature behind-the-scenes footage with monochromatic abstraction—and Hope’s sculptural lighting, oscillating between grandeur, pulse, and quiet focus to subtly shift the audience’s sense of participation and proximity.
Not A Word From Me allows each artist’s meta approach to performance to fully unfold through an interplay of score and improvisation. Resisting polish in favour of intimacy, friction, and interstices, it builds an anti-show of sorts: a space stripped of theatrical convention, where meaning arises through possibility, and presence is felt as much in what is withheld as in what is revealed.
Co-commissioned by CTM Festival, Semibreve, De Singel and Fiber Festival.