The Question of Queens: Olivia Louvel’s ‘Data Regina’
I’ve previously reviewed Olivia Louvel’s doggerLANDscape, a meditation on connections of time, place, and identity, which I very much enjoyed. Having delved a little further into her back catalogue, I discovered Louvel’s Data Regina, another multimedia project, this time exploring the contrasts between the personalities, political and personal fortunes, and legacies of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I of England. I was intrigued to see what Louvel’s approach might be. These unlikely queens were female rulers at the same time in a patriarchal world, their identities shaped by the closely linked issues of marriage, motherhood, politics, and religion. It could be said that Mary allowed love to overrule the politician in her, making two unwise marriages that led to her undoing. Elizabeth, on the other hand, never married and ensured she alone held the reins of power in her country. Mary’s reign descended into scandal, abdication, flight, imprisonment, and death, whereas, for all her trials and tribulations, Elizabeth ruled successfully for forty-five years and is widely regarded as one of England’s greatest monarchs. However, when she died, it was Mary’s son, James, who succeeded Elizabeth as ruler of England. So, in the end, did the mother win out over the politician (as Simon Schama once put it)? The intertwined yet conflicting lives of these two women pose many questions: What bestows immortality, and how do we define it? How do we measure success? Do we still feel it necessary to define Mary and Elizabeth in terms of gender, and why do we feel the need to compare them? Should we expect there to have been some sort of sisterhood or affinity between them just because they were women in a man’s world? Solidarity is not a given. After all, male rulers throughout history have constantly been in conflict with one another. So are our expectations of female rulers too high, even today, and are we judging them differently to men? Louvel’s work, like all good art, inspires much musing in these directions.
I don’t
think, in Data Regina, that Louvel admonishes Elizabeth for turning
against rather than helping her beleaguered cousin and fellow sovereign. That’s
left for the listener to ponder, and we must bear in mind the threat Mary posed
Elizabeth. Louvel’s focus is on contrasts, a point reflected in the album being
composed of electronic songs (collectively described as ‘The Antechamber’) and instrumentals
(‘The Battles’). Conceptually, these sections respectively draw attention to
the small spaces of the domestic sphere and the expanse of the battlefield,
mirroring the personal and political natures of these women’s lives. ‘Antechamber’
signifies anticipation of entering something bigger, and the listener is encouraged
to consider the gap between expectation and realisation that may have been
experienced by both Mary and Elizabeth.
Equals and
opposites are everywhere in Data Regina, constantly emphasising the
queens’ positions. ‘Love or Rule’, with its hovering violin at its start,
suggests a binary choice (‘I could never choose which one I want to lose’).
This may be seen as a false dichotomy today, but these women lived in the
sixteenth century, and things were different then. Elizabeth chose; Mary did
not. Their respective fates largely aligned with those decisions. In ‘Good
Queen Bess’, Louvel’s serene, sublime vocals imply an end to turbulence via the
accession of the Virgin Queen. The accompanying video shows Elizabeth’s head arising
from water, being born into a barren landscape. Female rule here is portrayed
as an emergent force, bringing calm, stability, and security. The counterpoint
is provided in ‘My Crown’, as Louvel assumes the identity of Mary in imagined
dialogue with Elizabeth: ‘Will you meet me? / Will I meet you? / I’m still
denied the favour I seek / But by no means should we divide our beings’. There
is ambiguity and tension here, underscored by Fiona Brice’s shuddering violin. It
is difficult to gauge whether Mary is unsure or asserting herself, and whether she
is presenting herself as a potential ally to Elizabeth or adopting a
confrontational stance. She may be doing all of these things, and it is worth
bearing in mind that Elizabeth, for all her self-possession, could be
maddeningly indecisive. Antoine Kendall’s stark video animation for ‘My Crown’
has Louvel in the guise of a queen, supported by an army of unyielding female
figures marching together in formation, perhaps defiantly representing John Knox’s
infamous ‘monstrous regiment’ of women (he vehemently argued that female rule was
contrary to God’s law). The black, white, and grey colour palette of this and
the animation for ‘Good Queen Bess’ visually suggests that the viewer consider
the binaries and nuances of these women’s lives, roles, and relationship with
one another.
Louvel
explores how Mary and Elizabeth liked to portray themselves. In ‘Farewell’,
Mary is resigned to her fate, believing she ‘will never see again the land of
[her] childhood games’ or ‘return to collect [her] full body’. Yet the
penetrating beat sounds a note of caution: she may be lost, but do not assume
that she has given up her defiant spirit (all too evident in ‘Infiltrate’).
This is a woman willing to fight. ‘Feb. 8 1587’ uses Mary’s own words,
including ‘in my end is my beginning’, a reference to her hope for liberation
through eternal life after death. She sees herself as a martyr, having
‘languished’ for Christ. The same sense of the dramatic is evident in ‘The
Veil’, which has Mary ‘weaving the veil of my apparel’ that it might propel her
away ‘for better for worse’ and ‘for [her] last encore’. Her counterpart and
rival also understood the role of drama in creating a legacy. ‘Elizabeth Song’ considers
the mythos of the English queen and the iconic image she herself fostered, based
on needing to ‘hide your body’ and ‘dress to disguise your weakness’ so as to
be seen as ‘mortal but divine’. Louvel’s lyrics highlight the deliberately
enigmatic and ironic nature of Elizabeth, a woman who (like many others) concealed
her true self beneath clothing and make-up because ‘she simply adored, being
adored’. Was she denying or celebrating and asserting her femininity? Or was she
manifesting her recognition of the uneasy relationship between power and truth,
knowing that the former, for her, must always win out? Speaking of things
enigmatic, ‘Deploy’ could equally apply to either Mary or Elizabeth, women
fighting for their crowns in a male world, exploiting their feminine charms as
weapons, if need be. The speaker ‘feel[s she] can pretend [she’s] leading armed
men to adorn [her]’ and ‘can pretend to fully comprehend the art of treachery’.
She ‘can deploy [her] charms’ as well as ‘arms’ and ‘reveal multiple layers’. Yet
the song is filled with longing…for what? Victory? Power? Love? Salvation? We
cannot know, for all is, of necessity, feint. ‘The Four Marys’ may, in fact,
sum up what the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth consisted of: ‘Fantasy / Travesty
/ Mask and play’.
Words are
one thing, but the breadth of struggle and sovereignty must stretch across a
soundscape. This is where the battles come in. Louvel reminds us that from the very
beginning of Mary’s life she was at the centre of conflict. The album’s opening
track, ‘Battlefield’, sets an ominous tone for what follows, as a disturbing
wind blows across the landscape accompanied by sinister, metallic reverberations.
‘Ancrum Moor’ and ‘Pinkie 1547’ evoke the so-called ‘Rough Wooing’ of the 1540s,
during which the English tried to subjugate the Scots and simultaneously force agreement
to Mary marrying Henry VIII’s son, Edward, to create an Anglo-Scottish
alliance. Louvel’s sparse instrumentals suggest the texture of battle, pulsing and
penetrative, calling to mind brief flashes of violent action, and even, at the
end of ‘Pinkie 1547’, the moans of the wounded and dying. In ‘Langside 1568’,
we hear changing frequencies as Louvel’s voice emerges, fragmented and incoherent
in a representation of a lost battle, the beginning of a long end. ‘Battlefront’
appropriately closes the album. Sound becomes a machine gun, underscoring the conflict
existing to this day between the reputations of Mary and Elizabeth.
Alongside the
album, Louvel has created www.dataregina.com,
in which she provides curated details of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots,
drawn from academic sources highlighting the position of queens in the sixteenth
century and calling attention to Mary’s little-known status as a poet. Four
animations complementing the album tracks are available on Vimeo (link below), my
favourite of which is the video for ‘Infiltrate’. Whilst the overall tone of
the song is one of defiance, the video is a brilliant visual synopsis of the relationship
between Mary and Elizabeth and of the literal and figurative confinement their
positions imposed upon them.
Louvel’s suite
of work offers her audience the chance to interact with the experiences of the
two queens in an almost visceral way, something that written histories, though
fascinating, cannot impart. Whether or not this thought-provoking project can
answer any of those above-mentioned questions concerning expectation, judgement,
and legacy, it certainly endorses Elizabeth I’s own statement about the nature
of monarchy, regardless of gender: ‘To be a king and wear a crown is a thing
more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it’. Nevertheless,
Louvel’s highly original twenty-first century reimagining of these sixteenth-century
queens gives new resonance to their lives. Their power endures. Vivat Reginae.
Links:
Data Regina | Olivia Louvel | Cat
Werk Imprint
'Data Regina' (LP, multimedia, 2017)
— :o:
'Infiltrate'
by Olivia Louvel (official video) on Vimeo
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