Lina Lapelytė’s live performance work Study of Slope (aka The Mutes) will be unveiled the final weekend (March 28-29) of the 14th edition of Taipei Biennial. Fourteen self‑described “tone‑deaf” amateur performers, who have been selected through an open call, will join the performance in the “Bidens Pilosa Radiata Garden” created for the Biennial. Together they will sing lyrics drawn from British writer Sean Ashton’s “Living in a Land.”

For Study of Slope, the artist recruited participants who considered themselves musically challenged or struggling with pitch issues. Applicants submitted videos of themselves performing designated songs, followed by interviews with the artist’s team. In these conversations, they shared personal reflections on singing, revealing intimate connections to vocal expressions. These resonate with elements in Lapelytė’s work: the Bidens pilosa radiata that fill the garden, a common plant in Taiwan often seen as a weed despite its therapeutic functions, and Ashton’s lyrics, framed in negative sentence structures that articulate actions “never done, not my doing.” Together, they invite us to re‑examine conventional norms and standards, reconsider the distance between the individual and the collective, and push the boundaries of vocal performance.