Callie Rose Petal
[she/her]
No body is alone in their loneliness.
A self-described ‘noise alchemist’, multi-instrumentalist and contemporary performance artist based in Glasgow, Callie Rose Petal (lonely carp) uses the many facets of her creative practice to attempt to crystallise the infinite complexity of a lived trans* experience; fusing the demonic and the devotional into a chimera, forging light from inside darkness.
First and foremost, Callie Rose Petal is a performance artist. Working with hard-hitting concepts that are inescapably political due to her own existence being politicised, Callie creates live and noise works which attack the canonical norms of creative practice.
Confessional expression of the shadow through her art has allowed Callie to accept the darkness within. On a personal level, her music is the deepest expression of her gender identity, and acts as the nurturing womb within which her transition is occurring.
As her practice has evolved from a music-centric modality to include live art and contemporary performance on a multi-media scale, she has begun to confront her most authentic self. A terrifying but liberating transmogrification is occurring, which has allowed her to exhibit live works in whitespaces and now internationally at Homografia festival, where her gory and visceral piece ‘IF ONLY HANDS COULD SPEAK’ was commissioned for the second time in 2023. This work, which is an extension of and accompaniment to her orchestral noise EP ‘ARCHITECT OF MY ABUSE’, extends the mythemes of Ovid’s story of Philomela as a means to move through her own sexual trauma.
In her attempt to cultivate empathy for and understanding of the trans* community, vulnerable self-expression has always been at the heart of Callie’s work, with her journey beginning in the form of a self-released music diary a decade ago on Tumblr. It was here that Callie first released her experimental spoken word collaboration with renowned artist Car Seat Headrest, ‘Your Shirt’ in 2014.
Many of Callie’s early recordings from her song journal were then compiled into a 108-track archival album, now available on Bandcamp and offered as a patron-exclusive download. WAR SORE is a noise cabaret EP that chronicles the end of a long term abusive relationship, which marked the start of Callie merging her cabaret inspirations with abrasion and screamed vocals, a sonic moodboard for the all-encompassing work of KATABASIS that would follow. Released in November 2021, this is her latest concept album and her studio debut, supported by the prestigious Do It Differently Fund, awarded by Help Musicians UK. Now pressed onto vinyl LP, this record is her most significant contribution to the music world to date.
She is also a Resident Entrepreneur with Creative Informatics, receiving funding to develop a novel music listening experience using digital innovation, and was both the subject of and score composer for the documentary 'What it Means to Be’ by Lea Luiz de Oliveira, which won best documentary short at the Mumbai International Queer Film Festival and was exhibited in a special screening at Homografia Festival, Brussels.
Callie is the host and curator of CONSTANTLY FAILING, her EHFM radio show based around the topic of noise as a genre, where she often releases original noise work, experimenting with texture and spoken word.