RESIDUAL, A COLLABORATIVE PROJECT BETWENN PETER KNIGHT AND DUNG NGUYEN, IS A MEETING OF OPPOSITES. WEST AND EAST, HUMAN AND INHUMAN, OLD AND NEW ALL FEED INTO THE DUO’S GENRE-LESS MUSIC.
The pair’s influences are vast, spanning jazz, Vietnamese folk, drone, rock and electronica. In their improvisations at Fremantle’s Kulcha, the final show of Tura’s Totally Huge New Music Festival, each influence is extracted from its original context and given fresh meaning in new surroundings. Residual is what remains.
east and west
Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Residual is the integration of classical Vietnamese influence and instrumentation. Nguyen was trained by his grandfather on the dan tranh (a 17-stringed zither) and the dan bau (a single-stringed zither with a flexible bar attached to the string allowing pitch bending) and he improvises on both. One of the key difficulties in integrating such instruments into a Western aesthetic is their indeterminacy in regard to pitch. In Residual, however, there is little need for exact tuning—sounds are used for their timbral and gestural character rather than as part of any definite pitch structure. In their final piece in particular, the free, smooth movement of the dan bau lofted beautifully above skittering electronics of Knight’s laptop.
Another important reference point for the duo is jazz. Both Knight and Nguyen are members of the Melbourne ensemble Way Out West. The jazz influence in the duo is best understood as an attitude or an approach rather than a particular sound: the shared improvisation and the measured pacing of the music seem to stem from the genre. Knight plays trumpet in much of the music and his improvisations on the instrument speak of calm virtuosity. His playing is subtle but often incredibly demanding technically and he appears quite happy to move between such virtuosic playing and simple textural techniques, such as breathing through his trumpet, as the music demands.
The great filter for these influences is the duo’s use of laptop. The tone of the trumpet and of Nguyen’s Vietnamese instruments are fairly diffuse but with the laptop, Knight is able to extract these tones and manipulate them, creating a vital middle ground. The tendency is toward additive composition, taking residual elements of the live performance and channelling them into the laptop with the sound quickly becoming a thick mass of disparate influences.
human and inhuman
Residual blends the very human sounds of breath and fingers with the very digital sounds of Knight’s laptop manipulations. The duo combine the elements effectively, playing each to their strengths. The sound of the live instruments is organic and Knight and Nguyen, as humans, are capable of spontaneity within improvisation. Nguyen in particular seems thoroughly invested in his performance, hunched over his instruments in a kind of rapture. For the laptop sound is simply data—it cannot make aesthetic judgements—but it can transform the data in ways that are novel and often surprising.
There is a sense of the laptop functioning as a kind of hive mind for the improvisation, the software as the central logic to which the other sounds adhere. Delicate string sounds and extended trumpet techniques are subsumed by laptop textures which become ever thicker with sampled and manipulated sounds densely overlaid. This provides a useful way of unifying the composition (always important in collaborative improvisation) but it also creates a sense of disconnect between the two live performers—each communicates with the laptop, less so with the other.
old and new
Residual is steeped in history. The dahn tranh and dan bau belong to a family of Chinese instruments which were brought to Vietnam around the tenth century. The trumpet is considerably more modern but far from a new instrument with the first valve trumpets constructed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Aside from the obvious new-ness of running these instruments through a laptop the duo employ several other innovative approaches to bringing these instruments into a twenty-first century context.
Nguyen’s dan tranh is prepared—objects placed on and between the strings to alter the sound. The result is incredibly effective, allowing the natural ornate tones of the instrument to sit beside percussive outbursts. Extended techniques are also a clear focus for the duo. Nguyen scrapes his fingers along the dan tranh to create ethereal glissandi and Knight breathes, whistles and sings through his trumpet to unexpectedly entrancing effect.
Residual is a collaboration in a far wider sense than simply being the work of two performers. The pair weaves an interesting counterpoint between East and West, human and inhuman, old and new. The aim is not to hold these elements together but to position them against one another. What is cancelled is the expectation of context and genre, Residual is what remains.
AN ANNUAL TRADITION OF THE TOTALLY HUGE NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL IS BREAKING OUT, A CHANCE FOR YOUNG COMPOSERS TO PRESENT RECENT COMPOSITIONS CHOSEN FROM SUBMISSIONS. THIS YEAR'S CONCERT PRESENTED 12 WORKS PRIMARILY FROM STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA AND THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF PERFORMING ARTS (WAAPA), EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY. WHILE 12 WORKS MIGHT SEEM A LOT FOR A SINGLE CONCERT, THE DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO STYLE AND FORM, AND THE VARYING LEVELS OF EXPLORATION ENSURED THE AUDIENCE A FULFILLING AND ENJOYABLE CONCERT.
First up was Red River for percussion, laptop and visuals by Sam Gillies (also one of the RealTime writers for Totally Huge 2011). While the drum and cymbal playing is spare it triggers a range of responses from the laptop, snatching sounds and transforming them into soft-edged pulsing phrases of saturated digital texture. The video depicts shifting monochrome washes resolving near the end to give the impression of skin—either that of a drum or perhaps human flesh. It's an interesting approach that doesn’t necessarily provide satisfying gestural and sonic syncs between acoustic, electronic and visual elements but rather allows them to co-exist in a unified yet differentiated atmosphere.
Sharon Wong's piece, Isolations, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano explored the thematic of its title. Starting with a clearly recognisable ascending/descending theme, the musicians fall out of sync with each other creating an atonal canon. At different points they each stop and move to another part of the room, literally starting out again on their own. Eventually they come back together, physically and musically ending on a single extended note. The harmonic angularities are challenging and it appeared a difficult piece to perform, going against the musicians' instinct to 'play together,' however it was bold in concept and form. It might be interesting to explore the physical isolation more fully by positioning the musicians at significant distances rather than the largely symbolic gesture of moving only a few steps away.
Tiffany Ha's composition offered another challenge to playing together. In String Quartet No. 1, she uses a Bach chorale but introduces anomalies: pitches sliding into dissonance; notes held in the middle of phrases creating stasis; and a final part in which it appeared each of the musicians must complete the section in differing time frames measured on their mobile phones. It was witty, well executed and genuinely surprising.
A similar playfulness was to be found in Jake Steele’s Hip Hop Symphony Spectacular for string quartet, brass and rhythm section. Scored for the largest ensemble this was perhaps the most ambitious piece of the night. Exploring the myth of Orpheus myth it shifted through a range of musical flavours with the flamboyance of a feature film score. Elizabeth Bonny also used a classical myth as source material in her work, Of Ten Parts, A Man Enjoys One Only [That’s What Tiresias Said], a jaunty piece for woodwinds, brass and percussion drawing on dub step rhythms which morph through a bolero style to end in a kind of bouncy Balkan revelry.
Kelly Curran presented the only jazz inflected piece of the evening with Deep Fry for piano, flute and percussion mashing together snippets of Bee Gees and House Martin songs with great agility. In Gareagre, Aaron Tuckey seemed almost cruel in the challenge he set his four clarinetists to play rapid ostinatos, constantly shifting lead melody between the players: a nice take on maximalist minimalism.
There were also two solo piano studies. Lament by John Mulligan explored a range of emotional territories from quiet and lyrical to strident. Kit Buckley’s Piece for Solo Piano worked with ideas of omission—the pianist free to choose to omit a note in a phrase, leaving a silence in its place—creating a quiet, spare piece reliant on phrasing for its gentle impact.
Suzanne Kosowitz presented Inveiglement for string quartet, percussion and tape. Originally the soundscore for a dance work the piece moves assuredly through a range of atmospheres with a sense of rhythmic fluidity. R E Smith’s Audio6—In Memory, also for string quartet, was a particularly lovely work. Led by a melancholic viola it traversed a range of emotional territories from exhilaration to devastation: a confident, accomplished and moving composition.
Mitchell Mollison’s Emulation 2: Trio employed digital technology but in a rather analogue manner. The three performers on saxophone, conga and guitar listen to a pre-composed piece and must re-create the sound as accurately as possible. I’m not sure if the instrumentation of the pre-set work is the same as here—this may make for an intriguing process of translation. The live instruments are used mostly for their timbral and textural rather than harmonic qualities, and this overall scumbling augmented by finger clicks and handclaps imbued the piece with a Beat poetry feel. It was also announced at the concert, that Mitchell Mollison was the recipient of the next Tura New Music Commission.
Given the overall scope of Totally Huge, the influence of various lecturers at local universities and the very wired-in nature of youth culture in general, I was a little surprised that there were so few compositions exploring technological devices and interaction. However, the works presented offered a real sense of exploration within their chosen styles. There was a strong feeling of playfulness and a sense of plasticity in the manipulation of classically inclined music modes that made for an evening of engaging and often challenging works by some very talented young composers.
TUCKED AWAY IN A REMOTE CORNER OF MIDLAND, IT’S DOUBTFUL THERE WAS A BETTER LOCATION THAN THE MIDLAND RAILWAY WORKSHOPS FOR THE REALISATION OF TWO OF MARINA ROSENFELD’S MORE ARCHITECTURALLY FOCUSED COMPOSITIONS, TEENAGE LONTANO AND CANNONS.
The huge industrial space was impressively illuminated with stage lighting for maximum impact, the rig’s installation a feat in itself—a clear embodiment of the effort that has gone into realising these works. Visibility was minimal which only served to add atmosphere to the music.
The evening began with Teenage Lontano. As the audience entered the vast warehouse a teenage choir stood motionless and expressionless in the thin strip of light that cut directly through the performance space. Teenage Lontano is halfway between a ‘cover’ and an interpretation of Gyorgy Ligeti’s choral work Lontano. While Rosenfeld’s composition keeps the choral sound mass as its central sonic characteristic, the addition of pointillist synth sounds curiously obscures the foreground and background of the music. Synthetic and vocal sounds are fused, with changes in either highlighting unique musical characteristics.
The most visually engaging aspect of the work is the rotating speaker suspended above the choir spinning at 33 revolutions per minute, the same as a gramophone record. While the speaker was smaller than expected, it remained something of an engineering feat (on all accounts), adding a Doppler effect to the synthetic sounds also emitting from other speakers during the performance.
The audience was encouraged to wander to experience the work from multiple locations—only a few individuals took advantage of this option. This was a shame, because as you moved past the choir different parts of the sound were highlighted, revealing the intricacies of the work’s functioning in the space. Performers were cued from synchronised iPods, which, in the context of the eerie siren calls, emergency whistles and the tense harmonies of the voices, added an undertone of cultural assimilation to the work making it all the more unsettling.
After a short break the audience returned for Decibel’s performance of Rosenfeld’s Cannons. This work utilises four bass ‘cannons’—large steel pipes fitted with subwoofers that act to resonate and alter the sound—in association with viola, cello, bass percussion and turntables. Beginning with Rosenfeld’s renowned ultra-minimal electronic sound objects the piece builds to a busy conclusion with an industrial feel.
Once again the audience was encouraged to wander around the space, which many did this time, experiencing the way the piece utilised the unique characteristics of the space. Sitting close to the ensemble, individual details and their direct connection to the musicians are apparent but the listener may have the sensation that they are unable to understand these sounds in the larger context of the work, thanks in particular to the directionality of the cannons. Further away from the ensemble more sonic details become apparent and the separate nature of the sounds slowly collapses into one huge combined sound object, aided by the absence of visual association between sound and performer and their location in the space. Truly a unique experience—no two people hear the performance in the same way.
Teenage Lontano and Cannons rounded out perfectly Marina Rosenfeld’s contribution to the Totally Huge New Music Festival. These works demonstrate different yet connected elements of Rosenfeld’s music exploring the role of projection of sound in space. As such, the performances offered a very special experience of sound sculpture in composition.
Totally Huge New Music Festival 2011: Marina Rosenfeld and Decibel, Teenage Lontano and Cannons, composer Marina Rosenfeld, Decibel artistic director Cat Hope, choir coordinator Laura Lowther, performers Decibel (Stuart James, Tristan Parr, Aaron Wyatt), Teenage Lontano choir members, cannon construction supervision Karlos Ockleford, Michael Bradshaw, production support Jeremy Pownall; supported by Tura New Music, Midland Railway Workshops; Sept 24; www.tura.com.au/totally-huge-music-festival/about
ina Stuhldreher, HOW I GOT GLOBALISM – Elements of a magic serendipity circle, (work in progress), 2011
courtesy the artist
ina Stuhldreher, HOW I GOT GLOBALISM – Elements of a magic serendipity circle, (work in progress), 2011
live art galleries
Whether by chance or design, two Sydney galleries are opening their doors for a month of performances and live art. At Tin Sheds Gallery, Rules of Play includes a series of readings, performances and works in progress. This is the Australian iteration of the exhibition which first took place at the Bell Street Project Space in Vienna in 2010 and features familiar faces from the growing live art/visual art cross-over scene such a Sarah Rodigari, Brian Fuata, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Teik-Kim Pok, Michaela Gleave and Kathryn Gray alongside international guests Bernadette Anzengruber, Michael Poetschko and Nina Stuhldreher.
Family photograph of Teik-Kim Pok performing magic in Singapore circa 1995
courtesy the artist
Family photograph of Teik-Kim Pok performing magic in Singapore circa 1995
Teik-Kim Pok is available for psychic readings, Brian Fuata asks his audience to learn and pass on a performance while Michael Poetschko continues his video-work-in-progress made across a number of cities exploring the idea of the “zone” in Tarkovsky’s Stalker. The exhibition component is open during the day with performances Wednesday-Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. Rules of Play, curator Kathryn Gray, supported by the Tin Sheds Curate/Innovate grant, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sept 9 – Oct 1; http://tinsheds.wordpress.com/; http://playingrules.tumblr.com/
Alexandra Clapham and Penelope Benton: THE GREAT WINTER
photo courtesy the artists
Alexandra Clapham and Penelope Benton: THE GREAT WINTER
September has also seen Peloton (P25) hosting Performance Month showcasing “both emerging and established artists within the field and spirit of Performance” (website). The final performances will feature Alexandra Clapham and Penelope Benton presenting the Great Winter, an endurance work built around movement and stillness inspired by the Norse myth of a three-year Winter—prelude to a devastating battle destroying heaven and earth. Sach Catts continues his ongoing investigation into stress and points of failure using concepts from structural engineering. Kevin Platt hopes to sing with a dog named Alfie, and the work by a collective of 80s performance artists R.O. & S.Q. remains deliberately mysterious. Art band Ex-Trendy (Robbie Ho and Matte Rochford) will finish off the month rocking the final night party. Performance Month, curator Francesca Heinz, Peloton, p25, Sept 1-25 peloton.net.au/
roaming sydney streets
Victoria Hunt, No Cold Feet, De Quicney Co
photo Paris Spellson
Victoria Hunt, No Cold Feet, De Quicney Co
For 10 years the annual Art and About festival has been chipping away at the reputation of Sydney’s CBD as a cultural wasteland and the program for the 2011 festival looks like they’ve really made some headway. A particular highlight will be Janet Echelman’s Tsunami 1.26 (actually based on the Chilean earthquake in 2010, not the recent Japanese catastrophe)—a gigantic piece of crocheted netting based on a 3D model of the tsunami. Made from high-tensile rope and suspended above the city it will “create an oasis of sculpture delicate enough to be choreographed by the wind” (website). Tsunami 1.26 is part of Powerhouse Museum’s Love Lace exhibition.
UK artist Michael Landy will present the 24th Kaldor Public Art Project, Acts of Kindness, in which he maps the collection of stories of small moments of kindness from Sydneysiders. Contested Landscape: Art Meets Science at Customs House Square curated by Leo Robba and produced by Anthony Papp, brings together a collection of artists and scientists “to tackle the complex contests for scarce land and resources facing our local communities” (website). At Sandringham Gardens in Hyde Park, Liane Rossler and Heidi Dokulil will present Happy Talk, building a pavilion using traditional methods and instigating talk and sharing around design in Pacific Island culture. And of course there’s the next installment of Laneway Art running until January 2012. (See review of the 2010 installment in RT101)
As well as the main program there’s a range of associated events such as the Mad Square After Hours activities at the AGNSW and De Quincey Co’s No Cold Feet, a dance/BodyWeather performance taking place in and around the architecture of St Mary’s Cathedral Square (See realtimedance for a profile on Tess de Quincey). Art & About, various locations, Sydney, produced by City of Sydney Events Unit, Sept 23- Oct 23
thou dost protest too much
Insomnia Cat Came to Stay, Crack Theatre Festival, TINA
courtesy the artists
Insomnia Cat Came to Stay, Crack Theatre Festival, TINA
Almost here is This is Not Art, the multi-headed beast that includes the sub-festivals Electrofringe, The National Young Writers’ Festival, Critical Animals Creative Research Symposium and the Crack Theatre Festival. Back in July, the situation seemed dire with Newcastle City Council deciding not to renew the festival’s triennial funding leaving them with an $18,000 shortfall. However in a show of support for the event, over $9,000 was raised via crowd-funding, with the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) coming on board with matching funding. In addition, local businesses chipped in and now the Council has seen the error of its ways and looks like increasing support in the future. So TINA lives on!
Now in its 14th year, Electrofringe is, as always, jam-packed with geekery, but with an emphasis on accessibility. You can learn about Arduino interfaces, hackerspaces, digital prototyping, solar-powered sound systems and the artistic integrity of robots. Then you can experience a range of innovative performances including electronic music duo Icarus’ album of 1000 variations; witness audiovisual meldings in the Electrobinge showcase and get into ‘digital freestyling’ with instruments generated in the Experimental Digital Instruments and their Performance course. Not to mention the Treasure Hunt where you pick up digital clues on USB sticks around Newcastle. There’s also the annual Electroprojections video screenings and Soda_Jerk’s Pixel Pirate II. (See RealTime’s Studio for the duo’s The Carousel. Festival co-director Cara Anne-Simpson also features in our studio)
Cracked Theatre Festival is a recent addition to the TINA family, starting out as a performance program of the 2007 National Young Writers’ festival. This year it’s offering workshops with Restless Dance Theatre, Leisa Shelton, Ever After Theatre and MKA. Also on offer are performances including Laura Scrivano’s Rapid Response, creating short site- specific performances around the city; Insomnia Cat Came To Stay, a kinky cabaret by Fleur Susannah Kilpatrick; and the Remix project by dancer Emiline Forster conjuring new choreographies from audience remixes of video clips.
Sound Summit, which has been part of the festival since 1998, has now separated from TINA, but will take place at the same time, same place, producing a range of workshops, label showcases and gigs headlined by MONO (Japan), Moon Duo (USA) and Wet Hair (USA) plus industry panels and DIY workshops.
It seems Spring breeds fringe festivals, with Brisbane’s Under the Radar almost over, Sydney Fringe continuing and the Melbourne Fringe kicking off on September 21. As usual there is a plethora of performance, dance, music and visual art experiences from independent artists, too numerous to offer highlights here. As well as presenting a range of independent productions, the Melbourne Fringe produces some programs itself and this year their ‘keynote’ project is Atlas. For the last three months local artists Benjamin Ducroz, Kieran Swann and Kit Webster have been consulting architects and designers in order to adapt their practices towards creating large scale installations and instigations around Melbourne, looking to actively engage the spectator as performer. Ducroz uses pattern based stop motion animation exploring the movements of nature; Swann ranges across performance, video and installation; while Webster works with audiovisual installations, digital sculptures and projections. The projects are expected to be “of a scale and standard that is beyond the usual financial or technical capabilities of an independent artist. And the audience can watch it as it unfolds” (media release). Melbourne Fringe, various venues; Sept 21- Oct 9; www.melbournefringe.com.au/
music takes flight
While Perth audiences are being treated to the banquet of events that is Totally Huge New Music Festival (see RealTime’s daily onsite coverage http://www.realtimearts.net/feature_contents/Totally_Huge_New_Music_Festival_2011) Sydney audience will have the pleasure of a one-off performance by acclaimed New York sextet Eighth Blackbird (named after a Wallace Stevens’ poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”). Playing from memory, the group is widely recognized for their “theatrical flair—and for making new music accessible to wide audiences” (website) with the New Yorker describing them as “friendly, unpretentious, idealistic and highly skilled.” For their Sydney concert they’ll be performing works by Philip Glass, Fabian Svensson, Mayke Nas, Timo Andres, Dan Visconti and Stephen Hartke. Eighth Blackbird, Studio, Sydney Opera House, Sept 22; www.sydneyoperahouse.com
local sites and sounds
The Leichhardt Council is calling for proposals for their pilot program that will see the historic town hall opened up for a variety of cultural activities across Autumn 2012. Individuals and groups are invited to submit proposals for a one-off, or series of events between March and May that will “will entertain, provoke, stimulate, and/or educate local and visiting audiences” (submission form). There’s an emphasis on engaging with the local community but events can include performances, concerts, festivals, workshops and even balls and markets. While the Leichhardt Town Hall is the focus for this program there is the potential to extend to other town halls and spaces within the Leichhardt local government area which includes Balmain, Rozelle and Annandale. Applications are also open to artists and groups not based in the area. Applications close October 11, 2011, www.leichhardt.nsw.gov.au/Grants.html
NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE DECIBEL HAS PRESENTED A NUMBER OF CONCERTS AT PICA THIS YEAR, EACH HIGHLIGHTING SPECIFIC UNDERCURRENTS IN CONTEMPORARY MUSICAL THOUGHT. THE THIRD IN THE SERIES, ENTITLED CAMERA OBSCURA, FOCUSED ON THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN SOUND AND SIGHT.
Visuality plays an enormous role in the interpretation of sound and vice-versa. In film, dance, theatre, games and live music visual and sonic textures intermingle, each feeding the other. The tendency is toward a direct relationship. In film, for example, music is used principally to heighten the emotional content of a scene. However Camera Obscura explored musical works with a more dynamic relationship between sound and image.
The first piece, Mothlight, by NSW composer Austin Buckett is inspired by a Stan Brakhage silent short film from 1963. As Brakhage did not want his silent films to be accompanied by music, the sound and image are isolated from one another. The musicians play flute, percussion and synthesiser tones which flutter, insect-like, about four speakers. A blank screen and large film projector onstage cast the players in a light of anticipation.
After a short pause in the performance the film projector whirs into life and Brakhage’s Mothlight plays while the performers sit in silence. The film is gorgeous—red silhouettes of moths skittering in grainy handmade animation. We recall the sonic textures, the remembered performance becoming the film’s soundtrack. The shimmer of percussion, the whir of the projector and the quivering moths of the film combine in an insect hum.
The next piece, Talking Board, is a collaboration between Decibel members Cat Hope and Lindsay Vickery. The score is a huge composite image of various drawings and photographs projected onto the screen at the back of the stage, which the performers also face. Four circles representing the four instruments (bass clarinet, bass flute, cello and viola) move about the image instructing players as to which section of the graphic to read. The notation is all asemic—not prescribing any specific meaning in terms of pitch, rhythm etc but rather implying a sonic texture. The conversation between sight and sound in the piece is beautiful. Jackson Pollock-inspired drippings and alien landscapes are answered by percussive murmurings and velvety drones.
In Talking Board, the score itself is allowed a voice in the performance. The circles move according to their own rules of chance and logic. This creates a mobile form, where no two performances will repeat and the performers are no more certain of the next move than the listener. The shared drama of such a form is a big part of what makes this piece so involving for the audience.
Samuel Dunscombe’s West Park adopts a similar mobility. A fully notated score for clarinet and flute is pulled apart and randomly rearranged. The live sound of the instrumentalists is mixed with field recordings made at West Park Asylum in Epsom, UK. The visual element of this piece is mostly imagined whereas the field recordings are directly referential, describing the world in exact terms. Particularly when such loaded material is used, the sounds conjure instant and vivid imagery. The live instruments heighten the experience, creating an immersive and unsettling event.
Next was recent WAAPA graduate Kynan Tan’s piece, Split Mirror Planes, featuring four live performers, four speakers and four visual sources (networked laptops whose screens were visible to the audience). The eye is drawn around the space as various flashes and abstract motifs are passed between the laptops. Spatialising audio is by now a fairly common technique in new music but spatialised visual material is something I have not seen before. The sound and images here do not merely reflect one another but rather create a sonic-visual counterpoint, constantly in motion toward or away from each other.
The final piece of the night was White Lines by Marina Rosenfeld, who joined Decibel, playing turntables. The piece uses a film score with two parallel white lines changing width and opacity to direct subtle shifts in sound. The background of the film used much more concrete imagery than the other films of the night, with footage of flowers, cigarettes and churches all tied together by the visual motif of the white lines.
Connotation is a huge part of Rosenfeld’s work. The associations of imagery and sound take on more complex meaning when they are juxtaposed. White lines suggest associations ranging from division to purity to cocaine and it is interesting to see how these all play off one another. One particularly intriguing section involved delicate swelling sounds from percussionist Stuart James superimposed over footage of an 80s glam rock band at full fervour, their teased hair and pelvic thrusts taking on some surprising new connections.
Sound and imagery create a feedback loop. Image directs the way that one hears sound just as sound frames one’s reading of imagery. Such relationships have existed forever. What Decibel has done in Camera Obscura is to foreground these relationships. What the audience is left with is a fuller sensory experience: sight and sound as a dynamic conversation.
Totally Huge New Music Festival 2011: Decibel, Camera Obscura, performers Cat Hope, Lindsay Vickery, Stuart James, Malcolm Riddoch and Tristan Parr, with Marina Rosenfeld supported by Tura New Music, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Sept 19; http://www.tura.com.au/totally-huge-music-festival/about
Joan Wright performing Andrew Ford’s Dark Side, THNMF 2011
SINCE ITS INCEPTION LESS THAN A YEAR AGO, THE ETICA ENSEMBLE HAS PRESENTED CONCERTS WITH AN EMPHASIS ON CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL MUSIC FROM THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES. OFFERING A PROGRAM OF SOLO AND ENSEMBLE WORKS FROM A VARIETY OF GENRES, TWILIGHT, PART OF TOTALLY HUGE NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL, PROVIDED PERHAPS ONE OF THE BEST OPPORTUNITIES TO PRESENT TO PERTH WHAT ETICA IS ALL ABOUT.
The first work for the evening was Andrew Ford’s Dark Side for solo double bass, performed by Joan Wright. Inspired by the vocal stylings of Bing Crosby, the double bass is amplified to make the intense murmuring noises of the lower register more prominent, positioning noisy string whispers against dark melodies that wind around one another. In a technically flawless performance Wright coaxed subtler nuances from the instrument and their musical implementation was interesting. However much of the piece seemed to be fairly static, always changing but not really feeling like it was developing. While the use of stasis can be a perfectly legitimate tool for musical expression, it didn’t seem to be the point of this work. Nevertheless Dark Side was a good start to the concert, engaging the audience with its emphasis on the subtle elements of the instrument.
Any momentum the concert had at this stage was swiftly halted by an overly long introduction to Charles Ives’ Piano Trio. While pianist Myron Romanu is to be commended for trying to communicate Ives’ complex musical language to the audience, his excessive detailing of each borrowed melody line and motif, and self-evident outlining of interactions between instruments made for a sluggish start. The performers themselves only really seemed to warm to the music halfway through the second movement, after which the piece really took on some life as interaction between musicians emerged. An ensemble performing the music of Charles Ives at its best captures both the distorted beauty inherent in the composer’s highly dissonant harmonies and the delightful emotional schizophrenia in his grotesque manipulations of popular and folk music. There is a strong place for Ives’ work to be performed by contemporary chamber ensembles such as Etica, but the full effect of the work can be lost when the music is only partially realised.
Philip Everall perfomring Nigel Westlake’s Onomatopeia, THNMF 2011
Philip Everall perfomring Nigel Westlake’s Onomatopeia, THNMF 2011
Philip Everall took to the stage next to perform Nigel Westlake’s Onomatopeia for solo bass clarinet and delay. Everall’s concise introduction and obvious enthusiasm for the work really helped to re-energise the concert. An undeniable classic of the Australian bass clarinet repertoire, Onomatopeia utilises a delay system to create thick, shimmering sheets of texture that slowly build and then evaporate. Minimalistic pulses help to drive the piece onward and give the work an involved yet accessible rhythmic character. Everall’s interplay with the electronic component was impressive, as he clearly understood how to control phrasing and dynamic elements of the music to draw out the best relationships in the sound. Minimalist music is always a crowd pleaser and Onomatopeia stood out as an obvious highlight of the evening.
Etica concluded their performance with a large ensemble work written by Perth composer James Ledger. Mean Ol’ World draws on blues motifs and attempts to transpose the form’s associations with despair and loneliness to the context of the modern chamber ensemble. Etica performed the material well, the work was sweet and accomplished and yet unchallenging.
This was always going to be a difficult performance for Etica in the context of the Totally Huge New Music Festival. The ensemble was coming off the back of three nights of inspiring concerts by Speak Percussion, Mark Gasser and Anthony Pateras that featured accomplished showcases of new Australian works as well as other challenging pieces from the 20th century. By comparison, Etica’s programming for the evening didn’t seem to have quite the same level of cultural significance. There is certainly a place, even a need, for an ensemble such as Etica in the Perth music scene, and the work they program appeals to a dedicated audience, but in the context of a Totally Huge New Music Festival, it seemed a little out of place.
Soundcapsule was a bi-monthly online feature offering free downloads of music by artists we had recently covered in RealTime.
Ensemble Offspring is a new music group performing works ranging from the 20th century masters to new commissions. They formed 15 years ago, originally under the name Spring Ensemble, the resident company for Roger Woodward’s Sydney Spring Festival. The group is led by percussionist Claire Edwardes and composer Damien Ricketson and has a core of regular musicians presenting an ambitious and plentiful program each year. They are well known for their eclectic approach to programming often collaborating across artforms, for example with contemporary performance group Theatre Kantanka (Sounds Absurd, 2010 and Bargain Garden, 2011), glass artist Elaine Miles (Fractured Again, 2010), scratch cinema expert and filmmaker Louise Curham (Waiting to turn into puzzles, 2008), video artists Andrew Wholly (Fractured Again) and Sean Bacon (Professor Bad Trip, 2011), and a host of specialist musicians including Halcyon vocal ensemble, improviser Jim Denley, experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi, and electronica/noise artist Pimmon.
The track provided here is from their 2011 concert, Professor Bad Trip, highlighting the work of Italian composer Fausto Romitelli. Romitelli was inspired by the comic artist Gianluca Lerici aka Professor Bad Trip and poet Henri Michaux who both explored the effects of drug-induced hallucinations through their work (see our review in RT104).
Thembi Soddell is a Melbourne based sound artist and electroacoustic composer working across recording, installation and live performance often collaborating with cellist Anthea Caddy. She is renowned for working with dramatic dynamics that have a disturbingly visceral effect on the listener. Gail Priest described her performance at High Reflections in RT103: “Soddell, hidden from view, created an amazingly evocative soundscape of unspecified but terrifying dread coming towards us slowly from a distance. An intensifying rumble augmented by half-human, half-animal shrieks reaches its zenith and then sucks back down, vacuum-like, to a ringing almost-silence, only to begin again. With a fine balance between augmented field recording and machine noise Soddell perfectly controls this exhilarating journey into her unconscious—or is it our own?”
Her installation Window (2008) has recently been presented as part of Sound Full in Dunedin, described by Sally Ann McIntyre as “somewhat paradoxically leav[ing] its closeted participants in a state of heightened vulnerability and bodily awareness.” (Sept 5 e-dition)
related articles
the sound already present
sally ann mcintyre: sound full, dunedin public art gallery
RealTime issue #110 Aug-Sept 2012 pg. web
part 1: sydney scenes & sounds
gail priest: silent hour, ladyz in noyz, high reflections
RealTime issue #103 June-July 2011 pg. 40
Lawrence English is a Brisbane-based composer, media artist and curator. He is perhaps best known for his label and mulitarts organisation Room40 which has released CDs by a remarkable number of artists, both local and international. He has also presented a vast number of concerts, series and festivals in Brisbane such as MONO, Syncretism and the Open Frame festival. English is also the Brisbane-based director of Liquid Architecture and for the 2012 incarnation, he joined with Philip Samartzis to curate the whole festival focusing on the Antarctic. Of his performance with his trio Monolith (with Werner Dafeldeker and video artist Scott Morrison) Greg Hooper wrote in RT110: “Floes crackle, ice drips, trickles plop and burble. Thin overlays of surface water, wind blown ripples, soft unbreaking waves. Fade out. …One of the best Liquid Architectures I’ve been to (but do I always think that?) and, with Monolith, an exceptional performance that deserves much greater exposure.”
English also recently collaborated with Scott Morrison on a reworking of John Cage’s film for solo light One11, as part of Clocked Out’s The Cage in Us celebrations at the Judith Wright Centre. Drawing on this material and extending it further, English has release a new album through the Line imprint, For / Not for Cage, from which this track has been taken.
Room40 have also allowed us to giveaway a track from fellow Brisbane-based composer Eugene Carchesio. While perhaps better known as a visual artist, creating complex geometric works, Carchesio has always been active as an underground musician appearing in bands such as The Deadnotes, The Lost Domain and working under pseudo-names such as DNE. Room 40 is releasing his back catalogue over the next year and currently has on offer a free taster from which this track has been selected.
Space-Shifter, Sonia Leber & David Chesworth
photo Christo Crocker, image courtesy the artists & Conical Gallery
Space-Shifter, Sonia Leber & David Chesworth
SPACE-SHIFTER, AN INSTALLATION BY SONIA LEBER AND DAVID CHESWORTH DIVORCES VOICE FROM CONVENTIONAL MEANING, ALLOWING VOCAL SOUNDS TO RUN FREE AROUND THE SPACE, COMPLETELY LIBERATED FROM CONTEXT. AN IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE, SPACE-SHIFTER IS, AT BEST, AN EXAMPLE OF SOUND ART FUNCTIONING AS AN INTRICATE AND FULLY REALISED COMPOSITION.
At face value, the stark minimalism of the presentation means that you almost expect some sort of dry, scientific examination of psychoacoustic effects. Sound emitting objects—transducers attached to various sheets of metal—are grouped and oriented in fixed positions around the space. Thankfully, initial fears are laid to rest, as the sonic character of the work proves unique.
Various kinds of rattles and plate reverb-style thumps help to give the disembodied vocals a strong presence in the room. The use of the PICA performance space’s black box as the site for the work adds gravity to the sound, creating a darker and more theatrical take on the antagonistic ‘trickster’ running around the space—at times creating a real sense of paranoia.
The visual aesthetic is decidedly minimal. The use of dented, broken and warped pieces of painted metal gives the impression that we are in the aftermath of some kind of powerful event that has caused the voice to be dislodged from the body and left free to run amok. While the physicality of the installation is a strong element, the audience might not ponder its significance, so immediately visceral is the sound content of the work.
It’s difficult to characterise these sounds. Treated as acoustic objects in their own right, a collage of extended vocal techniques fills the space. Initially the sounds are off-putting because of their disembodied unfamiliarity. However, after a while the various sequences of vocal extensions—squeals, grunts, growls, hisses, and laughter—become somewhat normalised within the context of the space. While you never quite know what to expect, the audience is able to quickly tune into the work’s lexicon and anticipate the kind of sound that could occur.
The spatialisation of this work is a real achievement. The distance between the sound emitting transducers is perfect and the dampened acoustic space of the PICA performance space creates a precise embodiment for the sound. It’s an immensely immersive listening experience as sounds bounce around, up walls and over the audience’s head.
But there is more to this work than just strange spatialisation. There is a real sense of composition, of arc and development over the duration of the 15-minute work. Dynamic variation is key to creating lasting interest in a piece such as this and is not neglected. Sound intensities rise and fall at rates that seem to be a little bit less than what the audience expects at any given time, adding yet another ‘trickster’ element to the work as it craftily eludes your expectations. With no obvious beginning or end, the constantly changing interaction between sound elements seems to allow the audience to derive a form from the work that is based upon their own experience of the space: a great achievement.
Pollen Trio
courtesy the artists
Pollen Trio
NEW MUSIC IS AN UNEASY PROPOSITION. IT COVERS AN INCREDIBLE ARRAY OF DISPARATE PRACTICES POOLING PEOPLE FROM CLASSICAL, ELECTRONIC, JAZZ, POST-ROCK AND VISUAL ARTS BACKGROUNDS INTO SOMETHING NOT FULLY BELONGING TO ANY OF THESE LINEAGES.
For the second of TURA’s Club Huge events, the PICA bar was home to a cross-section of the new music community with the performers and audience traversing a variety of ages, backgrounds and artistic spheres. The difficulty then is in finding a shared language with which to communicate across this musical Babel. The two acts of the night, free improvisers Pollen Trio and noise junkies Anthony Pateras and Malcolm Riddoch adopted separate but interesting stances on this pursuit of a musical language.
Pollen Trio is Miroslav Bukovsky (trumpet and electronics) Austin Buckett (piano) and Evan Dorrian (drums). The instrumentation suggests jazz and certainly this is a reference point (in particular the avant-jazz of The Necks), but there is more at play here. Buckett is a composer in the experimental and classical vein; Bukovsky was classically trained as a trumpet player in Soviet era Czechoslovakia and has been active in Australian jazz for many years while Dorrian considers fringe hip-hop such as Flying Lotus an influence. Their challenge, to take these musical dialects and synthesise them into something coherent and original and to do all this within the context of free improvisation, is more impressive still.
Free improvisation can be connected with automatic writing, a literary practice of the Surrealists in which the author attempts to write without critical thought. Read any piece of automatic writing and the result is a wash of texture. Language is used not for specific meaning but for impression, shape, tone and gesture. Free improvisation is not so much about forgetting one’s musical language as forgetting the rules of grammar and syntax that would normally apply. Similarly the result is a wash, tones and textures ebb and flow. Occasionally a lyrical escape of jazz piano, a heartfelt trumpet solo or a sudden stabilisation in the drum sounds occurs. These moments of musical language, taken in isolation, do not express any clear meaning, rather they appear as sentence fragments in the warm swirl of overlapping language.
Anthony Pateras, Malcolm Riddoch, Club Huge #2
photo Gail Priest
Anthony Pateras, Malcolm Riddoch, Club Huge #2
The night’s second performance was by Anthony Pateras and Malcolm Riddoch, playing a quadraphonic noise set of acoustic, analogue and digital feedback. If free improvisation is in tune with Surrealism then noise music has more to do with Dada. Noise explores the point where language fails, where function is ignored and form is all that’s left. With little in the way of discernable pattern or intent and at high volume, the sound of Riddoch and Pateras’ performance became a physical presence. Moments of swelling low frequencies and abrasive highs moved about the four speakers in aperiodic waves. The effect was of being submerged in sound.
Feedback is a mercurial element, constantly changing and impossible to predict. For the performers improvising with such material the role shifts from trying to produce sounds (as with traditional instruments) to managing sounds. Pateras and Riddoch’s performance was largely reactive. At each point throughout the performance one had the impression of the sound itself leading the improvisation with the two performers trying to elongate interesting sounds and quickly transform others. This has an interesting effect on the audience as well. The absence of any kind of objective ordering to the sound makes noise music incredibly subjective. Rather than trying to deconstruct the intent in the sound (as a listener at a classical concert might do) the task for the audience is to construct it, to build a sense of form within the random nature of the music.
New music is a language in process; its uneasiness will not be solved in a single evening. The two acts of TURA’s Club Huge #2 illustrate distinct approaches. Pollen Trio attempt to combine their various musical dialects into something more universal whilst Pateras and Riddoch highlight, and even revel in, the holes of such idealism: free improvisation as an attempt to explore and deconstruct one’s language; noise as the point where language fails. The experiment continues.
Philip Samartzis and Gabriel Nodea, field recording near Warmun
photo courtesy the artist
Philip Samartzis and Gabriel Nodea, field recording near Warmun
A FEW MONTHS BEFORE PHILIP SAMARTZIS WAS TO UNDERTAKE TURA’S REMOTE ARTIST IN RESIDENCE POSITION IN THE WARMUN COMMUNITY OF EAST KIMBERLEY, A FLASH FLOOD WIPED OUT THE TOWN AND ITS 400 RESIDENTS WERE EVACUATED TO KUNUNURRA. WHEN THE RESIDENCY RCOMMENCED THE COMMUNITY HAD ONLY JUST MOVED BACK AND WORK WAS UNDERWAY TO REBUILD THE TOWN. THIS HAS MADE SAMARTZIS’ PROJECT ALL THE MORE RELEVANT AS HE HAS SONICALLY DOCUMENTED A COMMUNITY IN THE PROCESS OF PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION.
Samartzis’ project is titled Desert, ironic now obviously as the area has greened up with the rain, but also as its isolated, wilderness connotations are shattered by the presence of much machine noise from the rebuilding process. Nevertheless Samartzis and his assistant Madelynne Cornish have treated this contrasting range of sounds with equal care and curiosity. The surround sound presentation at Totally Huge New Music Festival was a work-in-progress, as Samartzis begins the process of condensing the vast amounts of material and shaping it into a final work.
Given the circumstances it’s not surprising that the piece begins with water, a gentle fade-in that gradually envelops us in its flow. It’s not the roar of the flood but a reminder of water and its force. The presence of machines is introduced very early—part of the environment as much as the overarching sonic dome of insects, frogs, laughing birds and barking dogs. Large trucks drive past, or rather through us (the audience clustered in the middle of one of the underground studios of the State Theatre Centre, closest to the sweet spot); planes and helicopters fly low overhead; wind rips through trees making metal objects creak and clank.
Occasionally we are offered the voice of an older Indigenous woman, mixed with the metal clangs, so that we hear only the texture and warmth of her voice but not much of her meaning. She re-appears at the end, overlayed by cavernous thwumps of a water tank being hit and we can just make out phrases about “cleaning the water tank,” “tough old-man.” The only other human voices we discern as distant murmuring and chatter. It seems Samartzis wants to avoid recognisable speech, maybe for fear this might encourage a semantic listening, searching for the meaning and cause of the sounds. However as the sources of his landscape recordings are quite clear—we recognise birds, dogs, fire and insects—perhaps the shift to text might not impose such a rupture. While aware that this is not an attempt at text-driven documentary, it feels as though a little more sense of the people through their own voices and words may be beneficial.
Philip Samartzis discussing Desert, THNMF 2011
photo Brad Serls
Philip Samartzis discussing Desert, THNMF 2011
The quality, depth and clarity of Samartzis and Cornish’s recordings are absolutely breathtaking and the sense of immersion, particularly if you close your eyes, is total. Yet it’s a hyper-real world—all the natural sounds are larger than life, as if the insects and birds are five times the scale. We hear individual grains of campfire crackle as if we are, in fact, inside the fire. I imagine sci-fi scenarios of being shrunk down so I can observe life on a molecular level. I’ve not experienced this slippage between reality and fantasy in field recording-based pieces before. It’s utterly engaging and raises interesting questions around ideas of authentic representation and artistic intervention in the documentation of natural sounds.
A surprising highlight, particularly for the more industrially inclined, is the ‘metal machine music’ made by the range of construction going on in the town. (Samartzis cites Lou Reed’s album of the same name as a seminal influence in his early noise making days in the duo Gum; see Experimental Music in Australia, USNW Press, 2009, Ed Gail Priest.) Creaks, scrapes, cataclysmic clangs and whining power tools are deftly sculpted into almost rhythms and seeming songs, while never feeling artificially musicalised.
At the end of the residency in the community the project was presented as an installation in the Warmun Art Centre (from which, the curator Maggie Fletcher mourns, 1000 paintings were swept away in the flood). The performance presentation at Totally Huge is a 45-minute piece and while it loses some structural cohesion around three-quarters of the way through, it ends beautifully with the small sounds of running taps, water tanks and a final clang, perhaps the slam of a rusty gate. Samartzis will continue to work on the composition for further presentation and I look forward to its next iteration but for now our time in Warmun is over.
SPEAK PERCUSSION’S FINAL PERFORMANCE AT THE STATE THEATRE’S STUDIO UNDERGROUND FOR THE TOTALLY HUGE NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL WAS A TRUE SHOWCASE OF AUSTRALIAN TALENT. PERFORMING FOUR COMMISSIONED WORKS FROM AUSTRALIAN COMPOSERS LUKE PAULDING, THOMAS MEADOWCROFT AND LONG TIME COLLABORATOR ANTHONY PATERAS, SPEAK PERCUSSION, WITH ASSISTANCE FROM PERTH-BASED PERCUSSIONISTS, PERFORMED A FLAWLESS SET OF INSPIRATIONAL WORKS.
Refractions, an Anthony Pateras composition, was the oldest piece in the program, originally premiered by Speak Percussion in 2009. A piece for six performers, the work utilises a wide variety of percussion instruments, from bass drums, gongs and snares to glass bottles, keys and wine glasses. Refractions has a real emphasis on texture, ranging from harsh and brutal to moments of delicate beauty. The arrangement of sound for the acoustic ensemble is akin to experiments in electronic music. Very fast motifs fuse sounds together to form complex timbres and Pateras’ manipulation of the orchestration takes on, in parts, an almost granular character.
The ensemble is laid out in a semi-circle, with identical instruments arranged opposite one another. This allows for acoustic manipulations of the stereo field of perception, with sounds appearing to transition from one side of the ensemble to the other through the use of slight delays and subtle pitch relationships. Here, Speak Percussion demonstrate their formidable performative abilities in realising the subtleties of these sound movements, moving between various states of solid sound mass via moments of sonic fluidity that kept the audience mesmerised.
Thomas Meadowcroft’s The Great Knot followed. Alluding to a domestic environment through the incorporation of a variety of household objects laid out on a large kitchen table, Meadowcroft’s composition begins gently. A slow melody is performed on the thin sounding CASIO keyboard as the three performers create long drones from perfectly pitched wine glasses. With occasional inclusions of additional recorder drones and the noisy sound of marbles being spun in CD containers and mixing bowls, the piece feels almost synthetic, approaching the calm tranquillity of the synthesis works of Alva Noto.
Just as the audience begins to settle into a state of reflection however, backing music built from the sounds of the CASIO keyboard is triggered. Sounding like a campy soundtrack to an 8-bit video game from the 1980s, the change is totally unexpected. Noisy textures continue to be performed by the ensemble, and while the composition doesn’t exactly build to a climax, it is certainly clear that the music is getting busier. Somehow, this sudden change climbs above a simple shock tactic and takes the piece to a new level. What began as a quiet, contemplative composition by the end displays a playful sense of parody that seems to delight in so easily manipulating the listener’s expectations.
Luke Paulding’s work Surface Given Radiance was the first piece following the intermission. Utilising pitched-metal resonating instruments, the emphasis of this work is on the sound possibilities of the 80 microtonally tuned aluminium tubes and their interaction with the vibraphones and crotales. The latter instruments create a mesmerising blur of sound, a thick washy texture against which the dampened, microtonal pitches of the aluminium tubes can be sounded. The end result is an overwhelming sound mass that appears tonal, but which allows for various subtle microtonal fluctuations to be played out over time, brought out perfectly by the measured performance of Speak Percussion.
The final piece was Anthony Pateras’ second composition for the evening, Flesh & Ghost. The piece was premiered by Speak Percussion earlier this year at MONA FOMA (see RT102, p5), and was originally received on the eve of Speak’s 10th birthday. As with Refractions there is a strong spatial element to this work. Maximising the performance possibilities of all 12 performers, frequencies are sent up and down the length of the ensemble and bounced from performer to performer, elegantly curving in precise patterns. New material muscles its way through old material to propel the work forward, and while the general structure of the piece consists of blocks of rapidly developing rhythmic material, the general emphasis of the piece is on the movement of and relationship between different sounds. Thunderous toms and intense bursts of marimba disguise what is essentially a playful manipulation of frequencies and sound relationships and the variety of ways sound can be manipulated by the ensemble.
Speak Percussion’s final major performance for the Totally Huge New Music Festival (they had one more performance including a repeat of The Great Knot at The West Australian Academy of Performing Arts on Sept 20) was an excellent demonstration of some of the most exciting new Australian music written in recent times. Speak Percussion’s skill and dedication in realising these pieces is impressive and only serves to reinforce how much better off the Australian music scene is for their interest in commissioning new and original works.
Totally Huge New Music Festival 2011: Speak Percussion, Flesh and Ghost, composers Anthony Pateras, Luke Paulding, Thomas Meadowcroft, performers Eugene Ughetti (artistic director), Matthias Schack-Arnott, Peter Neville, Leah Scholes, Matthew Horsley Louise Devenish; presented by Tura New Music; Studio Underground, Perth State Theatre Center; Sept 17; http://www.tura.com.au/totally-huge-music-festival/about
Ross Bolleter, Daughters of Time, Piano Tapestry, THNMF 2011
THE PIANO IS PERHAPS THE MOST ENDEARING SYMBOL OF THE ROMANTIC ERA COMPOSERS. IMAGES OF LISZT SWAYING BACK AND FORTH AT THE KEYBOARD OR BEETHOVEN TAKING THE LEGS OFF HIS PIANO TO BETTER HEAR ITS VIBRATIONS THROUGH THE FLOOR FORM PART OF THE SYMBOLISM OF THAT MUSICAL ERA. IN THE 20TH AND NOW 21ST CENTURIES THE PIANO PRESENTS MORE DIFFICULT QUESTIONS FOR THE COMPOSER. PIANO TAPESTRY DISPLAYS, THROUGH STARTLING VIRTUOSITY, SOME WAYS IN WHICH CONTEMPORARY COMPOSERS HAVE APPROACHED THE INSTRUMENT.
The opening piece of the night, and the one furthest removed from the romantic tradition, was by Ross Bolleter improvising on what he calls “Daughters of Time.” These are three pianos taken from various locations in outback Australia where, through years in the harsh climate, they have been weathered to the point of ruin. The instruments are heavy with memory. They have spent lifetimes in outback hotels and on verandas at the mercy of the elements. The symbolism is stark but affecting. It is impossible to distance the sound of these pianos from their connotations. The unevenly resonating strings and muted chimes instantly conjure images of the Australian outback and of an uneasy relationship to European heritage.
The visual element of the performance furthers such associations. Bolleter sits not on a piano stool but on a cushion on the floor, his head down and arms outstretched in order to reach the three pianos surrounding him. It’s a far remove from the exaggerated raptures of Liszt or Chopin but Boletter’s performance is nonetheless intense and introspective. Improvised freely, the music exists in two time frames; firstly in the immanent present of the improvisation, and secondly in the imagined memory of these Daughters of Time. As Ross Bolleter writes “Ruins are what remain–still passing away to be sure, but lingering.”
The romantic image of the piano is also closely associated with those other romantic inventions, the solo recital and the instrumental virtuoso. This is a world that second performer, Mark Gasser, inhabits. To see a performer so totally in control of his instrument is mesmerising. In Gasser’s first two pieces by Ronald Stevenson, there is an incredible athleticism to the performance. The music is loud, complex and unrelentingly fast.
Gasser’s third piece, Luigi Nono’s …sofferte onde serene… (…serene waves endured…) uses a recorded performance of Nono’s friend, the pianist Maurizio Pollini as its seed. This recording, made slightly before Pollini’s death, blends with similar material played by Gasser. Nono says that the recorded piano resonates like the bells in the lagoon near his house and the serene bells of a funeral. The result is of still, calm beauty in the face of tragedy.
The last piece, by Australian composer Lindsay Vickery, employs the Yamaha Disklavier, which uses data from a laptop to drive small motors attached to the piano’s hammers. This automated material blends with passages played by Gasser–a duet for man and machine. Having keys move of their own accord thwarts associations with the piano as an extension of the performer’s fingers. Coming straight after Nono’s piece, there is a supernatural element to the performance, as if ghosts live in the keyboard.
The final performance of the night was from Anthony Pateras. Classically trained, he spent years experimenting with prepared pianos—using nails, coins and other objects inserted between the strings to expand the timbral and gestural capabilities of the instrument. Tonight’s piano is not tampered with but under Pateras’ fingers gesture is still the dominant force. The notes are so densely overlaid that any sense of pitch (other than in the most general sense of high or low) is meaningless. The music pivots between swarms of clustered notes and hammering percussive tones.
This performance too was improvised but with a stronger sense of form than Boletter’s. Pateras’ personality features prominently in his performances and he had clearly made a conscious effort not to engage the audience in any direct manner. He walked onto the stage in sandals (which he removed to play) and sat motionless at the piano for almost a minute before commencing, willing himself into a musical trance. This aesthetic is a big part of the way that Pateras brands himself. It seems to be a reaction against the ego and conservatism of the solo recital and, simultaneously, a bid for the audience’s undivided attention. This contradiction only serves to heighten the appeal of his music and of Pateras himself as an indispensable part of it. This is music that only he can play.
The aim of Piano Tapestry was to present three different approaches to the piano. Bolleter’s symbolism, Gasser’s virtuosity and electronics and Pateras’ gestures formed a triptych of contemporary approaches to the instrument—modern tastes, techniques and technologies meeting with the ghosts of the piano’s history.
Totally Huge New Music Festival 2011: Piano Tapestry, Mark Gasser, Ross Bolleter, Anthony Pateras, presented by Tura New Music, Perth State Theatre Centre, Studio Underground, presented by Tura New Music, Sept 16; http://www.tura.com.au/totally-huge-music-festival/2011/about
FOLLOWING THE VIRTUOSIC PERFORMANCES OF ROSS BOLLETER, MARK GASSER AND ANTHONY PATERAS AT THE PIANO TAPESTRIES PERFORMANCE, A SMALL GROUP OF NEW MUSIC ENTHUSIASTS RETIRED TO THE PICA BAR FOR CLUB HUGE #1, SOMETHING OF AN AFTER PARTY FOR TURA’S MAIN PRESENTATION THAT EVENING. THERE, MARINA ROSENFELD AND JULIAN DAY PERFORMED STRIPPED BACK, ELECTRONIC PERFORMANCES.
Julian Day’s set was of a continuation of his synth drone project, An Infinity Room (or AIR for short). This has included up to 30 separate synthesisers, but tonight was reduced to two with each synthesiser connected to a separate speaker. Using large metal bolts to continually sustain notes, Day manipulated thick six-note chords, one note at a time, gliding from synth to synth, his minimal gestures creating maximal results.
Exploring various approaches to the manipulation of drones makes up a large part of Day’s composition practice, something that has been clearly realised with his AIR project. In this context, Day is able to construct tension and release through slight adjustments in the chords, generating beat frequencies and other psychoacoustic effects by creating clusters of notes close to one another. While the initial addition of a note stands out, it is quickly absorbed back into the larger sound mass. At the same time the removal of a note before it is replaced creates a noticeable gap in the chord bringing abscence to the foreground.
The PICA bar space offered a unique experience of the music. While sound filled the space, rather than being particularly reverberant some areas of the room were successful bass traps which gave the work a nice, inadvertent interactive element. By and large however, much of the audience was content to remain seated in a fixed location. While the set was too loud for some, others were content to bow their heads in a kind of monastic reverence for the 25-minute duration.
Following a brief intermission, New York artist Marina Rosenfeld performed a 25-minute turntable-based set. Rather than using pre-existing recordings of other people’s sounds, Rosenfeld transfers her own pre-recorded sounds to acetate records. This gives the samples a different sound quality from traditional vinyl, which is fully exploited as a unique musical characteristic.
Compared to Day’s, Rosenfeld’s set was a decidedly minimal affair, with rhythmic clicks and bursts of noise playing against gentle, evolving tones. Unfortunately the noise of Perth’s Friday night Northbridge clientele imposed itself on what was otherwise a more meditative set.
Rosenfeld occasionally built up several layers of intensity but the more remarkable element of her performance was how willing she was to use space between her sounds. While Julian Day’s performance maintained a consistent intensity, Rosenfeld was able to incorporate space and dynamic nuance into her performance, placing an emphasis on the relationship between different sounds. Bass tones were used sparingly, almost more to add emphasis in certain places and to remind the audience that a fair proportion of the music consisted of mid and high-ranged sounds. This interplay between samples embedded the entire set with a sense of gravity and significance, the result of which was an engaging performance that brought the evening to a surprisingly introspective end.
Overall Club Huge #1 was the perfect response to the intense, virtuosic nature of the earlier Piano Tapestries concert. After the breakneck performances of Mark Gasser and Anthony Pateras, a couple of hours of laid-back, minimal electronic music from Julian Day and Marina Rosenfeld was exactly what was needed to clear the head.
AFTER AN EXHILARATING BEGINNING TO THE FESTIVAL WITH SPEAK PERCUSSIONS’ DELICATE AND BRACING INTERPRETATION OF LE NOIR DE L’ETOILE, THE BRAVE AND DEDICATED ONES (OR THOSE WHO COULD FIND A LIFT) JOURNEYED TO THE DEEPEST, DARKEST INDUSTRIAL ZONE OF PERTH—OSBORNE PARK—TO THE ARTIFACTORY, FOR A SONIC ONSLAUGHT IN THE FORM OF NOIZEMACHIN!!
This was the third iteration of NoizeMachin!!, a new series presenting six to eight artists performing for around eight minutes, with the each act transitioning into the next. The first amalgamated set was by one of the event organisers Sam Gillies (also one of the RealTime @THNMF writers), Mitchell Mollison, HomeWrecker, Karl Ford and Anthony Pateras.
Gillies established a comparatively gentle tone with his laptop set: a thick layering of growling purrs peppered with sweeping beeps and dial tones. Moving in and out of the mix, almost subliminal, is a pretty melancholic melodic line. Gillies’ wet flutters transition neatly with Mitchell Mollison’s deep, glitching sinetones, sounding like CPU overload (immediately making this laptopper anxious), but nicely crafted to make angular rhythms. Mollison’s is a patient set with incremental shifts and additions winding down into a just-audible subiness.
HomeWrecker (aka Fur Chick or Clair Pannell) overlaps with a nice sonic and gestural rupture, spinning a metal disc on a miked-up plate. She very quickly transforms the dry rattle via several pedal-punches into a solid chunk of rumble which she tends and adds to with actions like miked-up scissors snipping through cardboard to make rhythms; or small, pretty vocals that are immediately swallowed back into the texture.
Anthony Patera, Karl Ford, NoizeMachin!! #3
photo Gail Priest
Anthony Patera, Karl Ford, NoizeMachin!! #3
Karl Ford enters the sonic picture with deep metallic tones, perfectly pitched to the remains of HomeWrecker’s rumble, elicited from miked and affected turntable beds struck like gongs. These sounds are looped and manipulated to create a curiously meditative industrial music. Anthony Pateras finishes off the set with some heavy ructations, penetrating oscillator pings and crazy glissandi. It’s full to overflowing, but never too much in Pateras’ signature way, ending with a sea of static.
Malcolm Riddoch, NoizeMachin!! #3
photo Gail Priest
Malcolm Riddoch, NoizeMachin!! #3
Significant atmosphere was lost as the fluorescent lights were turned on for the changeover, but quickly regained by the second set of Malcolm Riddoch, I.n0jaQ and Christopher de Groot. (A group jam planned at the end was cancelled due to the lateness of the hour.) Riddoch sets a mike up in the space and, working across four speakers, sculpts the feedback into pulsing cycles, pulling overlapping tones closer and closer together until they join in a persistent nasal attack, with deep under-thumping. The final touch is a beautiful glassy flutter making something really complex, perplexing and quite magnificent.
I.n0jaQ, NoizeMachin!! #3
photo Gail Priest
I.n0jaQ, NoizeMachin!! #3
I.n0jaQ then approaches his workstation—a ladder with pedals placed on the steps so that he must climb to activate them. His sound consists of layers of dirty, swirling, granulated feedback issuing from a guitar amp, increasing in volume to the extent that the physical gesture, while intriguing, doesn’t really have a discernible sonic impact. Finally he climbs to the top of the ladder, places a wooden box contraption on his head, from which a cannon ball is suspended, and attempts to activate it, but the sound of the ‘spring reverb cannon’ is also lost in the mix. He concludes by tilting the ladder until he and it topple to the ground leaving us with that sad feedback of a smashed guitar, or ladder in this case.
The dramatic ending of I.n0jaQ and the unfortunate computer crash of Christopher de Groot meant that there wasn’t really a transition between the two acts, but the chime and silence of reboot was a good ear cleaner. With a strong interest in film scoring, de Groot’s work offers a sense of deep perspective within the sonic field; a throbbing bass in the distance, small harsh crescendos of gritty noise in the foreground; and a particularly beautiful sound with the elasticity or shape of a voice, but none of the organic timbre, like an otherworldly siren song or alien opera. A mesmerising finish.
The innovative format for NoizeMachin!! makes for an ever shifting palette of sounds without overloading the audience. I can’t help wondering how satisfying it is for artists to play for only 10 minutes, and I wouldn’t have minded hearing more from some and perhaps some longer transitions. However, overall it’s pacey and never gets the chance to be boring. The performance was also accompanied by a quite dazzling display of laser projections—not just your standard radioactive green, but deep blues, purples and pinks—which while not necessarily enmeshed with the audio, created a sense of dynamism and energy in the space. The venue, The Artifactory, is itself pretty interesting, a warehouse full of gadgets, calling itself a hackerspace—a membership based collective of nerds, noodlers and geeks exploring all manner of electrical wizardry out in the suburbs. For those that way inclined, their workshops, and of course NoizeMachin!!, are definitely worth the trip.
LE NOIR DE L’ETOILE IS A WORK ABOUT SOUND IN SPACE…
Composer Gerard Grisey considered sounds as living objects—their time consisting of birth, life and death. Le Noir de L’Etoile is scored for six percussionists and tape, performed here by Melbourne’s Speak Percussion, with the musicians positioned in a circle around the performance space, audience seated in the middle. The sounds of the various gongs, drums and cymbals emanate from discrete points, move about the room, meeting in the reverberant space—their lifecycles intermingling. Grisey implements a number of dramatic spatial techniques, subtle gong sounds spill from one performer to the next, centrifugal drum rolls cycle rapidly around the players and a mess of independent tempi create a web of interlocking sound.
Visually, there is a ceremonial and communal, almost tribal aesthetic created by having audience members huddled together in semi-darkness while around them visceral and often violent percussion plays. Percussion is very gestural in comparison to most other instruments, the physical movements of the player forming a direct relationship to the sound the audience hears. With sounds appearing from all points around the audience, however, this relationship becomes confused and the results range from mesmerising to terrifying.
Le Noir de l’Etoile is a work about sound in space…
The impetus for the piece comes from a meeting between Grisey and Joe Silk, an astronomer and discoverer of the Vela Pulsar, the remnant of a long dead star whose electromagnetic fluctuations are made audible by radio receiver. This sound is taken, literally from space, and distributed via four speakers into the constructed space of the performance where it interacts with the live sound of the percussionists. In fact, the two sound sources are remarkably similar. The signal from the Vela Pulsar is so regular and percussive that it was originally believed to be a communication from alien beings. The sound of the pulsar, interacting with the tones of the percussionists, becomes another member of the ensemble.
The Speak Percussion Ensemble (Eugene Ughetti, Matthias Schack-Arnott, Peter Neville, Leah Scholes, Matthew Horsley and Louise Devenish) was truly awe-inspiring. The overriding impression of their playing was of total dynamic control: moments of still and delicate texture were interspersed with frenzied outbursts of noise without ever feeling abrupt or out of place. Even in moments of near silence there was an incredible intensity to the performance.
Underlining the spiritual and ceremonial undercurrents in his work, Gerard Grisey refers to the sound of the Vela Pulsar as “a meeting with the eternal timekeepers.” The performance then becomes a totemic celebration of this far distant sound. The resonant tones of the percussion contribute to a feeling of togetherness, the influence of something beyond the performance space. The intense, shaman-like concentration of the performers too played an important role in the overall environment in which the sounds were to live out their time.
Le Noir de l’Etoile is also a work about sound in time…
The influence of music on one’s perception of time was an area of fascination for Grisey. Sound in space and sound in time are intimately related concepts though they do differ. Sound is a way of breaking up and measuring time, just as time is a way of separating sound. There is an interesting distinction to be made between the different ways sound is experienced by players and audience.
The piece’s six performers have a difficult relationship to time in the piece. Each is sent individual click tracks while they perform, allowing mosaic-like effects of overlaid tempi. The speed of each click track is not static either; a glance at the score reveals that at points throughout the performance tempi are changing every bar. For the performer this requires intense concentration—keeping exact measurements of time in complex circumstances and over such duration is no mean feat.
For the performer an understanding of time dictates their approach to sound. For the audience however, the understanding is much more subjective, the ebb and flow of time informed by the sounds of the performance. At points of relative quiet there was a feeling of anticipation among the listeners—time lengthened by expectation. During moments of climax the raw adrenaline of the performance took over and time seemed to speed up.
Le Noir de l’Etoile is an exploration of sound, space and time.
Speak Percussion act as conduits, their imposing array of instruments sounding in sympathy with a fundamental universal rhythm. A profoundly impressive experience.
Totally Huge New Music Festival 2011: Speak Percussion, Le Noir de l’Etoile, composer Gerard Grisey, performers Eugene Ughetti (artistic director), Matthias Schack-Arnott, Peter Neville, Leah Scholes, Matthew Horsley, Louise Devenish; Studio Underground; Perth State Theatre Centre, presented by Tura New Music, Sept 15; http://www.tura.com.au/totally-huge-music-festival/about
Projection Playground, Olaf Meyer, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
photo Bernie Phelan
Projection Playground, Olaf Meyer, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
THE RECENT ANNOUNCEMENT THAT RENOWNED FITZROY VISUAL ARTS INSTITUTION GERTRUDE CONTEMPORARY MAY FACE AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE WITH ITS BUILDING BEING PLACED ON THE MARKET HAS RENEWED DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THE INCREASING GENTRIFICATION OF THE INNER SUBURBS OF MELBOURNE. GERTRUDE STREET IN FITZROY HAS FORMED A LOCUS OF SUCH DEBATES, HAVING WITHIN A GENERATION TRANSFORMED FROM A GRUNGY, NEGLECTED STRIP INTO A SOUGHT-AFTER PRECINCT OF GALLERIES (COMMERCIAL AND NOT-FOR-PROFIT), DESIGNER BOUTIQUES, QUEUE-INDUCING BARS AND HIGH-END RESTAURANTS.
Gertrude Street epitomises the eternal progression as well as the contradictions of gentrification, linked strongly to Melbourne’s persistent, prolonged and generally successful attempts to increase its tourist appeal. Gertrude Street nowadays is a must-see local spot for visitors, yet amongst the high-end stores and eateries, the central and most recognisable buildings of Gertrude Street remain the Atherton Gardens housing commission flats while the locally infamous 86 tram—immortalised by the Bedroom Philosopher—tracks down the street on its way to and from Bundoora.
The Gertrude Street Projection Festival began in 2008 as the initiative of the Gertrude Association, an organisation established by local residents and business owners Kym Ortenburg and Monique McNamara, as a response to changes in the demographic of the street and the local area. For just over a week in late July, Gertrude Street transformed into a long, outdoor gallery of light and projection-based artworks, displayed on and at times integrated within the street’s architecture and commercial spaces. Involving 29 sites and over 50 artists the theme of this year’s festival was Hidden: Places & Spaces, with a particular emphasis on projects that engaged diverse local communities as participants and makers.
Façade, Greg Giannis, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
photo Bernie Phelan
Façade, Greg Giannis, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
Many such pieces could be seen to respond to an idiom of being ‘hidden in plain view.’ Greg Giannis’ Façade engaged with the architecture and residents of the housing commission flats, imposing structures in themselves yet all too easily disregarded (consciously or unconsciously) by passersby. Giannis’ work re-inscribed them into the Gertrude Street landscape by presenting an interactive, community-based piece. Through the artist’s website people could create their own images and designs to be projected throughout the festival on the south-facing façade through a colourful tetris-like grid. Fittingly, the blockish nature of the projected images also hinted at the standardised and homogenous nature of public housing architecture.
Stars & More, Arika Waulum, Yandell Walton, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
photo Bernie Phelan
Stars & More, Arika Waulum, Yandell Walton, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
Particular emphasis was placed on the Indigenous history of the local area, connecting the festival’s theme to a sense of forgotten histories and rarely told stories. In addition to a camp-fire storytelling night at the Atherton Gardens involving elders and members of the local Indigenous community, vital places of Indigenous culture and history were highlighted through the 10-night projection series, in particular an imposing but relatively overlooked building on the corner of George Street, The Melbourne Aboriginal Youth, Sport and Recreation Centre (MAYSAR). This was the site of one of the festival’s most visible projects, with Indigenous artist Arika Waulu working with Yandell Walton to create a large-scale projection, Stars & More, on the building’s exterior. Combing archival images and photos of current MAYSAR participants with imagery of native Australian flora and Indigenous dancers, the piece presented a powerful image of ongoing and regenerative cultural practice. Waulu and Walton’s project re-animated a place of importance and ongoing involvement for Fitzroy’s Indigenous community, which remains perhaps little-known to many residents as well as passersby.
A number of the pieces were equally prominent—anything but hidden—projected large-scale onto recognisable buildings such as the Gertrude and Builders Arms Hotels. Olaf Meyer’s Projection Playground re-envisioned the Post Office rotunda as a spinning merry-go-round, offering a playful and compelling beacon and invitation to explore the outdoor gallery.
The festival largely reinforced a conceptualisation of time-based practice within public art, but moved it away from screen-based presentations. In contrast to pieces that enveloped the architecture of entire buildings, a number of artworks integrated themselves obliquely and unassumingly into the environment. In a sense, many reclaimed the spaces of commercialised interests in Gertrude Street for artistic expression and collaboration. Salote Tawale’s In the Bag elicited surprised responses from viewers as they searched for and eventually found the discreet installation in the window of a Crumpler store, with the video being precisely projected within one of the label’s distinctive bags. The piece illustrated the constraints to creativity by incorporating the image of the artist writing, sleeping and inhabiting a confined environment.
Portrait of a Man 1, Yandell Walton, Clare Hassett, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
photo Bernie Phelan
Portrait of a Man 1, Yandell Walton, Clare Hassett, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
Yandell Walton and Clare Hassett’s intervention into Francis Antiques, Portrait of a Man 1, reconceived a symbol of decorative and homely adornment into an image of reserved melancholia. Taking a rather unremarkable portrait of a male figure on display in the store, the artists subtly projected a fine track of tears down the figure’s cheek, hinting at some unknowable story or secret. It was a poetic reminder of the memories and narratives attached to and embodied within objects, so easily lost and forgotten once personal ephemera become ‘second-hand’ objects of trade.
The Encounter with the Shadow, Sabina Maselli, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
photo Bernie Phelan
The Encounter with the Shadow, Sabina Maselli, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
Other artworks offered fantastical and imaginative musings on the ‘inner lives’ of their inhabited spaces. Sabina Maselli’s elegant The Encounter with the Shadow revealed the ‘second life’ of the Gertrude Street store Bistrins Emporium—which doubles as a venue for evening dance classes. By incorporating an animated and silhouetted flamenco dancer against a folding screen in the shop’s rear, the piece evocatively re-activated the this space.
Fitzroy Learning Network, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
photo Bernie Phelan
Fitzroy Learning Network, Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2011
Ultimately, some of the most moving pieces in the festival were the most modest in nature, made by and reflecting a diversity of local community groups. Located off Young Street and rather easy to miss was a simple photo montage—barely a few frames—offering a poignant image. Created by students at the Fitzroy Learning Network, the piece illustrated a group of young people shunning and physically excluding one of their peers from their friendship group. The piece resonated within the cold and dark streets, simply conveying the vital importance of individual and community bonds. Amongst the visually spectacular and crowd-pleasing installations of the festival, it was pleasing to discover that some of the most memorable artworks really were hidden, or at least requiring some patience and searching from the viewer, even on a chilly Melbourne winter’s evening.
Gertrude Association, The Gertrude Street 2011 Projection Festival , founding concept Monique McNamara, creative producer, director Kym Ortenburg; various sites, Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, July 22-31; www.thegertrudeassociation.com
“A great festival is one that exposes participants and audience to new directions and ideas and the 2011 Totally Huge New Music Festival promises to do just that with an impressive program of Australian and international work.” (Tura website) The program will include concerts, installations, surround sound presentations, live broadcasts, workshops artist talks and more. Highlights include Space/Shifter, an installation by David Chesworth and Sonia Leber, and a surround sound concert by Philip Samartzis who has been Remote Artist in Residence in the Warmun community in the East Kimberley. Speak Percussion will perform two concerts: Gerard Grisey’s epic percussion masterwork, Le Noire de l'Etoile; and Flesh & Ghost featuring works by Anthony Pateras, Luke Paulding and Thomas Meadowcroft.
Special guest for this year’s festival is New York composer and turntablist Marina Rosenfeld renowned for her ongoing performance, Sheer Frost Orchestra: a graphically notated score performed by 17 females using nail polish bottles to activate electric guitars. For THNMF 2011 Rosenfeld who will present Teenage Lontana at the Midland Railway Workshops working with local teenagers to create a 35-voice choir and speaker installation. Rosenfeld will also be the keynote speaker of the Totally Huge New Music Festival Conference focused around the theme of Immanence.
Other artists in town for the festival include from Australia, Speak Percussion, Decibel Ensemble, Etica Ensemble, Pollen Trio and Ross Bolleter along with guests Mark Gasser (UK) and from Japan FourColor, minamo and moskitoo.
realtime writers at totally huge
RealTime Associate Editor Gail Priest will be joined by two Perth-based writers.
Sam Gillies
I am a West Australian based sound artist and composer with a taste for everything from chamber based electro-acoustic works to experimental sound art and conceptual pieces.
I studied at UWA, completing a Bachelor of Arts with majors in Communications Studies and English Literature, before completing a Certificate Level IV of Music Composition at The West Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2008. I started studying a Bachelor of Music (Composition and Music Technology) at WAAPA in 2009 under the tutelage of Cat Hope and Lindsay Vickery, and will finish these studies at the end of 2011.
As a solo artist I am active in the Perth new music scene curating the regular NoizeMaschin!! event at The Artifactory hackerspace and performing at venues such as the Velvet Lounge and the Bakery and as part of TURA’s Club Zho series. I also perform with two local bands, The Shallows, an 11-piece indie rock band and Cycle~ 440, an electro-acoustic duo of piano and laptop.
In addition to my musical pursuits, I have been making my own films and multimedia experiments while pursuing an interest in journalism and academia, having contributed works to a variety of publications and conferences over the last four years. I also currently co-host the Difficult Listening program on public radio station RTRFM, along with Bryce Moore and Philip Everall.
Henry Andersen
Sound, for me, is a source of fascination. Sound, real or imagined, is a big part of the way in which I think about the world. It’s everywhere, inescapable and infinitely variable.
As a composer, what interests me most about music is gesture and contrast, taking disparate musical elements and making them into something that has its own unique logic and identity, but is still visceral. The kind of music I enjoy listening to shares these traits—a balance between what one hears directly (the sound itself) and what one hears indirectly (the intention behind a piece, its logic, its place within the artistic landscape.)
What one experiences when they listen to music is the synthesis of these two elements – all sound carries some connotation. It is these connotations that change the way that we experience music, from culture to culture, person to person and even day to day. Connotation and intention in music is something that I love to unpick and so, for me, writing music and writing about music go neatly together.
Ross Gibson and Carl Warner, ‘protection’ 2011, C-type photograph and blackboard paint; source material courtesy of Fryer Library, The University of Queensland
courtesy of the artists
Ross Gibson and Carl Warner, ‘protection’ 2011, C-type photograph and blackboard paint; source material courtesy of Fryer Library, The University of Queensland
IN THE WEEK I FLY TO BRISBANE TO SEE THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND ART MUSEUM’S THREE EXHIBITIONS ABOUT ASYLUM SEEKERS, SBS SCREENS THE DOCUMENTARY GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM, TO MUCH CONTROVERSY AND ACCLAIM. IN THE WEEK I WRITE THIS ARTICLE, THE HIGH COURT RULES AGAINST THE MALAYSIAN SOLUTION, LIKEWISE TO MUCH CONTROVERSY AND ACCLAIM.
Not only do these two events bookend my encounter with these exhibitions, they also seem to encapsulate some of our representational habits when it comes to refugees. In both instances, asylum seekers are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere; being spoken about but rarely spoken to or with; being represented through images and text but rarely representing themselves. In other words, they seem to oscillate between invisibility and hypervisibility—disappearing into detention centres, only to reappear just in time for the next election.
Ross Gibson and Carl Warner, ‘protection’ 2011, C-type photograph and blackboard paint; source material courtesy of Fryer Library, The University of Queensland
courtesy of the artists
Ross Gibson and Carl Warner, ‘protection’ 2011, C-type photograph and blackboard paint; source material courtesy of Fryer Library, The University of Queensland
Such an economy of visibility puts artists who are not asylum seekers in something of a double bind: if they choose to represent refugees, they risk reproducing them as spectacle; if they choose not to represent refugees, then they risk further hiding the already hidden. One solution is to work with images produced by asylum seekers themselves, as Ross Gibson and Carl Warner do in their commissioned work Waiting for Asylum: Figures from an Archive. The archive is the Elaine Smith Collection, held by UQ’s Fryer Library and named after the activist who donated it. From 2002, as part of Rural Australians for Refugees, Smith and her husband coordinated support for asylum seekers held on Nauru. Not only did they write letters to detainees, they often wrote for them—to parliamentarians, lawyers, anyone who would listen. They also sent disposable cameras to detainees so that they could document their lives on Nauru. When detainees had finished the film they would post it back to the Smiths, who would then develop two sets of photographs: one to send to Nauru and another for their own records.
In the archive these images are postcard-size, remarkable in their domesticity, even banality. Rather than being pictured as cargo on a boat or as convicts in a prison, these images show asylum seekers in the supermarket, on the beach and preparing for a birthday party. In the gallery, however, they become poster-size, blown up to 29.4 x 41.4cm: their figures are too large, the tropical colours too lurid. The danger of spectacle awaits, but Gibson and Warner forestall this possibility by painting thick black stripes across the faces of these figures, in a gesture that both protects and censors, as Gillian Whitlock and Prue Ahrens point out in their excellent catalogue essay. There are 69 images in all, displayed in three rows of 23, an arrangement that recalls the family photo album but also reminds me of the Sydney Morning Herald’s “Meet the Barcode Kids” article (2005), proof that even an intervention as astute as this cannot fully undo our spectatorial histories and habits.
Benjamin Armstrong, Witness 2010, ink and pigment on paper
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
photo Carl Warner
Benjamin Armstrong, Witness 2010, ink and pigment on paper
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
If one way to intervene in the economy of visibility is to include images by asylum seekers themselves, then another is to examine the machinations of this economy, specifically its main motor, the media. This is what the second exhibition, Collaborative Witness: Artists’ Responses to the Plight of the Asylum Seeker and Refugee, sets out to do. The ambivalent movement from within the detention centre to without is beautifully captured in Benjamin Armstrong’s ink and pigment drawing Witness (2010), in which a face without eyes—a mask perhaps—peers through the wire. Initially it reads as yet another image of a refugee in detention, until we realise that as well as looking into these unseeing eyes, we could also be looking through them.
John Cattapan, Imagine a raft 2003
oil on linen, private collection, Brisbane
courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane
John Cattapan, Imagine a raft 2003
oil on linen, private collection, Brisbane
Jon Cattapan’s Imagine a raft (Mirror boat no.1) (2003) also plays with our sight, depicting a ship that could be carrying refugees but is covered in pale blue scratchings, red and white ink blots and a very faint grey grid. It might be a map, a series of data projections or an infrared image but we can’t tell and what’s more it obscures the boat beneath it, suggesting that for all our technologies of vision, we still cannot see.
Guan Wei, On the water no. 4 2007, synthetic polymer paint on cotton rag. Private collection, Brisbane. Reproduced courtesy of the artist
photo Carl Warner
Guan Wei, On the water no. 4 2007, synthetic polymer paint on cotton rag. Private collection, Brisbane. Reproduced courtesy of the artist
Guan Wei depicts a smaller boat in On the water no. 4 (2007) in a cartoonish style that reminds me of a book I had as a child, Pamela Allen’s Mr Archimedes’ Bath, in which Mr A and his friends frantically hop in and out of the tub in order to work out why the water always overflows when they bathe together. Only here on this tiny boat, there is no escape, no exclamation, only terror as the boat starts to sink. Wei’s lines of water also look like contours on a topographical map, as if we could map the mountains of bodies beneath.
Rosemary Laing, and you can even pay later 2004, c-type photograph
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2007. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
Rosemary Laing, and you can even pay later 2004, c-type photograph
There are no bodies in Rosemary Laing’s remarkable photograph titled and you can even pay later (2004), only desert and distance. Taken from the perimeter of the Woomera Immigration and Reception Processing Centre after its closure in 2003, all we can see is pale pink sand, a bleached blue sky, white demountables and, cutting across it all, a steel fence with razor wire. There are several other strong works, which I can’t do justice to here, but which all seem to interrogate the relationship between blindness and insight in some way.
Safety Zone 2010, John Young, digital photographic prints; chalk and blackboard paint on paper
60 parts. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
photo John Young
Safety Zone 2010, John Young, digital photographic prints; chalk and blackboard paint on paper
60 parts. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
The third exhibition, Safety Zone by John Young, takes a different approach again, by examining an historical event, the Rape of Nanjing. Immediately prior to the Japanese invasion in December 1937, 21 foreign nationals stayed in the city to set up the Nanjing Safety Zone in order to protect 250,000 Chinese citizens from Japanese troops. The main part of this exhibition records this act of remarkable resistance through a combination of images, texts and documents which are displayed on 60 separate boards and hung across two walls. Some feature pictures of the doctors and nurses who saved lives; others issue instruction such as “Girls: 1. Cut your hair 2. Blacken your face 3. Wear men’s clothes.” On others, there are images of sheet music, lists of names, scraps of interviews—the detritus of history reassembled, though not completely rescued. Perhaps in 74 years, another artist will be making a similar work about our own period, its policies and the artists and activists who so strongly resisted them.
Exiting the exhibition, I see a small sign that says: “Caution: Images in this gallery may disturb some viewers. Parental guidance recommended.” It is a gesture of such caution and care, but in combination with the images it warns against, it seems absurd, almost offensive. Why is it that we can summon compassion for the viewer, but none for the victim?
Waiting for Asylum: Figures from an Archive, artists Ross Gibson and Carl Warner, curators Prue Ahrens and Michele Helmrich, project research Gillian Whitlock; Collaborative Witness: Artists’ Responses to the Plight of the Asylum Seeker and Refugee, artists Benjamin Armstrong, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green, Jon Cattapan, Tim Johnson and Karma Phuntsok, Rosemary Laing, David Ray, Judy Watson, Guan Wei, curators Prue Aherns and Michele Helmrich; John Young: Safety Zone; University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, June 11-August 7; www.artmuseum.uq.edu.au/2011-exhibitions
With thanks to Professor Gillian Whitlock for arranging access to the Elaine Smith Collection at the Fryer Library.
This article first appeared in RT e-dition sept 6.
RealTime will be on-site at TURA’s upcoming Totally Huge New Music Festival in Perth. Gail Priest will be joined by local writers Sam Gillies and Henry Andersen, delivering daily reviews of concerts, installations and events across the 10-day festival. Highlights include Space/Shifter, an installation by David Chesworth and Sonia Leber, and a surround sound concert by Philip Samartzis who has been Remote Artist in Residence in the Warmun community in the East Kimberley. Speak Percussion will perform two concerts: Gerard Grisey’s epic percussion masterwork, Le Noire de l’Etoile; and Flesh & Ghost featuring works by Anthony Pateras, Luke Paulding and Thomas Meadowcroft. International guests include the inspirational Marina Rosenfeld who will present Teenage Lontana at the Midland Railway Workshops working with local teenagers to create a 35-voice choir and speaker installation. Local ensembles Decibel and Etica will present concerts, and there is a three-day conference including Rosenfeld as a keynote speaker, panels and artist presentations. TURA, Totally Huge New Music Festival, various venues across Perth, September 15-25. www.tura.com.au/totally-huge-music-festival/events.
Since the demise of the Live Bait festival based at Bondi Pavilion in the mid 2000s Sydney has been fringeless but 2010 saw a new Sydney Fringe emerge, run by the Newtown Entertainment Precinct Association, drawing on the wealth of venues, bars and vibrant culture of the inner west. This year the festival continues to grow with 300 events taking place over three weeks, extending beyond the inner city with activities in Leichhardt, Parramatta, Chatswood and beyond. With so much on, and heaps of new and emerging artists, it’s hard to pick out highlights (fringe festivals, by their nature being gloriously variable), but here are few intriguing possibilities.
For those seeking dance, Angela Hill’s piece Laying Down Bone (Bringing up Brain) with sound designer Andre Hayter at the Newtown Theatre explores the “body mind connection to trauma” (website), in a lecture, dance theatre hybrid. Hill’s work is playing in a double bill with Margot Politis’ Woman on Verge described as “Part Pina Bausch part Gloria Swanson…40s screen glamour, horrendous psychotherapies and definitions of insanity” (website). Over at PACT in Erskineville, Emiline Forster performs a solo, Dust, about a housewife defending her home from encroaching corporations and personal neuroses.
From Japan, Theatre Group Gumbo present Level 7 at the Greek Theatre in Marrickville, a provocative farce about three irradiated survivors of the post-tsunami nuclear incident trapped in a resort-style reality TV show. In Spinning a Yarn at PACT, Simone O’Brien and Susan Williamson become Mrs Polly Mer and Mrs Polly Ester (the Plastic Bag Ladies of the Sea) creating a coastal cubby house out of knitted refuse and inviting you in to share their stories. With a set by Joey Ruigrok and costumes by Matty Stegh, this short performance installation could hold hidden treasures.
Nice Work If You Can Get It, The Lost Rung
photo Ben Mitchell
Nice Work If You Can Get It, The Lost Rung
At the Newtown Theatre, The Lost Rung (Adam Jackson and Josh Mitchell) will present Nice Work If You Can Get It, an acrobatic onslaught as the two men fight to climb the corporate ladder. Also at the Newtown Theatre IPAN (International Performing Arts Network) presents Bite Size offering six new works by women writers drawing on the theme “things aren’t always as they seem.” See the full program for information on visual arts, cabaret, burlesque, music, special events and more. Sydney Fringe Festival, various venues, Sept 9-Oct 2; http://thesydneyfringe.com.au/
notes from the underground
Dad Made Dirty Pictures
Now in its fifth year the Sydney Underground Film Festival continues to hunt out “unique, quality independent films that transgress the status quo and challenge the conservative conventions of filmmaking” (website). RealTime contributor Katerina Sakkas reports here on her sneak peak at some of the fare:
Dad Made Dirty Movies takes an affectionate look at Stephen C Apostolof, the man who fled communist Bulgaria to eventually produce and direct such schlock classics as Orgy of the Dead (1965). Told mainly by his four children, with commentary from actors and film historians, the film features interesting archival material from Apostolof’s life and plenty of footage from the ‘dirty movies’ in question.
Better This World is a stranger-than-fiction documentary charting the events which led to two young Texans being charged with domestic terrorism after they were found in possession of Molotov cocktails at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Engagingly told through a mix of interviews, surveillance footage and court transcripts, it raises serious questions about the role of FBI informants and the justice of the US sentencing system.
Guilty of Romance
From Japan’s Sion Sono, writer and director of cult horror film The Suicide Club (2002), comes the trippy thriller Guilty of Romance, a titillating, violent descent into sexual degradation wrapped up in a murder mystery. And finally William S. Burroughs—A Man Within pays tribute to the iconoclastic Beat writer, sometime heroin addict, gun enthusiast and ‘Godfather of Punk’ through a multitude of interviews with fellow Beatniks, ex-boyfriends, Burroughs biographers, filmmakers and punk rock luminaries such as Patti Smith and Iggy Pop. (KS)
Other highlights include Recycled Cinema featuring Soda_Jerk’s sample masterpiece Pixel Pirate 2, The Director’s Cut (see RT’s Studio), The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (previewed in RT103) and a range of short film programs with evocative titles such as Animation Fornication, LSD Factory and Mother’s Milk featuring shorts by female directors. Sydney Underground Film Festival, The Factory Theatre, Marrickville, Sydney College of the Arts, Rozelle, MuMeson Archives, Annandale, Sept 8-11; http://suff.com.au/
ozasia
Continent, CAVA, OzAsia 2011
courtesy OzAsia
Continent, CAVA, OzAsia 2011
The fifth annual OzAsia festival at the Adelaide Festival Centre will have a distinctly Japanese flavour. Japanese mime company CAVA will present their 2010 Edinburgh Festival smash hit Continent: a cartoon-style physical farce based on the Coen Brothers’ film Barton Fink. KOAN presents a concert of Japanese chamber music led by Natsuko Yoshimoto, violinist and concertmaster of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, along with Shakuhachi master Akikazu Nakamura from Japan and Claire Edwardes on percussion with Bernadette Harvey on piano. On the other end of the musical spectrum the festival will also feature the Australian debut of Shugo Tokumaru, known for his eccentric pop creations and Japanese Ska band Cool Wise Man with singer, songwriter, producer DJ Likkle Mai. The Japanese Film Festival has also been incorporated into this year’s OzAsia.
Rhinoceros in Love, National Theatre of China, OzAsia 2011
courtesy OzAsia
Rhinoceros in Love, National Theatre of China, OzAsia 2011
Non-Japanese fare includes Rhinoceros in Love by the National Theatre of China, directed by Meng Jinghui, which is said to have “reinvented modern Chinese drama” (website) when first performed in 1999. The show will debut at OzAsia and then tour to the Brisbane and Melbourne festivals. South Australian based Indonesian dancer Ade Suharto collaborating with composer David Kotlowy will present In Lieu, an evening of dance and contemporary gamelan music. And the festival would not be complete without the Shaolin Warrior touring spectacular featuring 22 Kung Fu Masters. OzAsia, Adelaide Festival Centre, Sept 2-17; www.ozasiafestival.com.au
monumental visions
Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont, Blood Sport, 2010 (detail). Courtesy of the artists and Goddard de Fiddes Gallery, Perth.
photo Kim Tran
Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont, Blood Sport, 2010 (detail). Courtesy of the artists and Goddard de Fiddes Gallery, Perth.
Presented in PICA’s Central Galleries, Stadium will be the first survey exhibition of work by Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont, who create large scale theatrical, video and photographic works exploring historic themes and cultural propaganda. The gallery will be literally transformed into a stadium, tiered bleachers and all, equating the idea of exhibition with “games or contests of strength” (press release). The centrepiece of the exhibition is Ever Higher, a performance inspired by the controversial 1930s films of Leni Reifenstahl involving an aerial performance and local cheerleaders, the Perth Angels. Along with the performances there will also be an artist talk hosted by curator Leigh Robb and a screening of Riefenstahl’s Das Blaue Licht (1932). A review of the exhibition will appear in RT106 (Dec-Jan). Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont, Stadium, curator Leigh Robb, PICA Central Galleries, Sept 3-Oct 30,; see website for performance times; www.pica.org.au
challenging perspectives
Warwick Thornton, Stranded, 2011, film still, commissioned by Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund 2011
Warwick Thornton, Stranded, 2011, film still, commissioned by Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund 2011
Warwick Thornton’s Stranded, a 3D installation depicting the artist, dressed as a stockman nailed to a neon cross in the outback, bemused and challenged audiences when it first appeared in Stop(the)Gap, an exhibition of international Indigenous media art curated by Brenda L Croft, and part of the 2011 Bigpond Adelaide Film Festival. RealTime reviewer Tom Redwood wrote “Perhaps what we are seeing here is the juxtaposition not only of ideologies but of histories: the ‘newness’ of the flash cross (Christianity) highlighted by the ‘ancientness’ of the surroundings (Country, Dreaming)…Perhaps in Stranded we encounter another ‘muddying of the waters:’ art that worries at the line between Indigenous and non-indigenous, elusively pushing beyond established concepts.” (See full review.) Sydney audiences will be able to experience this intriguing work including a series of accompanying photographs at Stills Gallery through September. Warwick Thornton, Stranded, Stills Gallery, Paddington, Sept 7-Oct 8; www.stillsgallery.com.au
Bindi Cole, Made for Each Other, 2008, pigment print on Hahnemuhle (cotton rag) paper
courtesy the artist
Bindi Cole, Made for Each Other, 2008, pigment print on Hahnemuhle (cotton rag) paper
Meanwhile Melbourne audiences will be treated to a survey exhibition of works by Indigenous artist and curator Bindi Cole. The exhibition, Seven Times Seven, will feature three major image series and a video work exploring the “classification of indigenous Australians according to the darkness or lightness of their skin” (press release). In her Not Really Aboriginal series Cole explores her own perspective on Aboriginality in contemporary Australia, while Post Us explores the influence of the “white Anglo-Celtic male viewpoint” on culture; and Sistagirls looks at transgendered people from the Tiwi Islands. Finally the video centrepiece, Seven Times Seven, explores ideas of forgiveness. Bindi Cole, Seven Times Seven, Nellie Castan Gallery, Sept 15 – Oct 8; www.nelliecastangallery.com
Elma Kris, Waangenga Blanco, Daniel Riley McKinley, Belong
photo Jason Capobianco
Elma Kris, Waangenga Blanco, Daniel Riley McKinley, Belong
Melbourne and Wollongong audiences can also experience Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Belong as it continues its east coast tour. Consisting of two works—ID by artistic director Stephen Page (see RealTime Dance for a full profile), and About by choreographer and company dancer Elma Kris—Belong has roused enthusiastic critical and audience responses in Brisbane and Sydney. Bangarra Dance Theatre, Belong: Merrigong Theatre Company, IMB Theatre, IPAC, Wollongong, Sept 8-10; www.merrigong.com.au/shows/belong.html; Playhouse Theatre, The Arts Centre, Melbourne, Sept 16-24; www.theartscentre.com.au; www.bangarra.com.au
Dave Sleswick, Noa Rotem, The Hamlet Apocalypse, The Danger Ensemble
photo Morgan Roberts
Dave Sleswick, Noa Rotem, The Hamlet Apocalypse, The Danger Ensemble
IN THE HAMLET APOCALYPSE, DIRECTOR STEVEN MITCHELL WRIGHT AND DRAMATURG CHRIS BECKEY WITH THE DANGER ENSEMBLE PLAYERS (KATRINA CORNWELL, MARK HILL, ROBBIE O’BRIEN, NOA ROTEM, POLLY SARA, DAVE SLESWICK AND PETA WARD) AND THE CRUCIAL ASSISTANCE OF SOUND AND LIGHT CREATIVES DANE ALEXANDER AND BEN HUGHES HAVE PRODUCED A TOUR DE FORCE OF RAW, PHYSICAL THEATRE PERTINENT TO GENERATION Y.
On the evidence of some representatives pontificating on the ABC program Q&A, this generation can appear shallow and egotistical but in the theatre is producing work that, as in this case, is refreshing and strikingly insightful. The Hamlet Apocalypse proved a resounding finale to the La Boite Indie program—La Boite’s opening of its doors to Brisbane’s independent sector.
There was no attempt to deconstruct Shakespeare’s Hamlet but instead to distil its essence, a project which electrically proved itself along the nerves of an entranced audience, however fragmentary its final descent into chaos and however much it relied on the audience pulling together its own conception of the Ur-play. The rather simple conceit was to have the actors perform Hamlet while awaiting an unspecified but awfully imminent apocalypse that was announced at intervals by a shattering merge of light and sound which had the audience literally on the edge of their seats and the actors dealing with the prospect of their own demise.
As performers, they clung to what they knew best—performing a play but also performing themselves performing a play (in the tradition of Hamlet’s play within a play), spinning off in directions suggested by the characters or situation they were acting out that struck a personal chord in their own lives. Their energy and passion drew in the audience, creating poignant vignettes often absurd, comical or heart-breaking and presented in a fashion that created the sheer goddamned beauty of life, howsoever bitter the knowledge that these golden lads and lasses we had so briefly come to know must, implacably, come to dust.
The Hamlet Apocalypse, The Danger Ensemble
photo Morgan Roberts
The Hamlet Apocalypse, The Danger Ensemble
Hamlet’s reduction of man to a “mere quintessence of dust” equals the declaration by the Chorus in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus that, “Alas, generations of mortals, I count your life as equal to zero.” In both cases, the fate of the protagonist is a paradigm, not an exception. But the Greek play is closer to a sense of moira (fate) conceived not as the classical moira of the theoreticians of tragedy but as something darker looming in the distant background, something undefined and threatening that cannot take the form of gods, abstract ideas or forces of nature. Something “rotten” in the state of Denmark is only a poetic construction for this innate, savage fate that entangles us all in a common destiny (the etymology of the word moira means lot, share.) We are all subject to a dreadful wound, and guilt towards the divine, whether conceived as Greek hamartia or Christian original sin. Life, as the godless Kafka proposes, is a trial. This full force of tragedy was conveyed in the production by accelerating breakouts of chthonic sound and light counting down to an apocalypse that bore no historical significance but instead seemed innate to existence, relegating to tragi-comedy a society that prefers to go shopping.
The Hamlet Apocalypse, The Danger Ensemble
photo Morgan Roberts
The Hamlet Apocalypse, The Danger Ensemble
If anything, I would question whether the individualistic ‘post-apocalyptic’ pronouncements by the line-up of actors at the end were altogether too modest, even timid and fatuous after the journey we had taken together. The famous “To be or not to be…” speech by Hamlet was saved by Dave Sleswick to this very last, when it was underscored by having only the instantly recognisable opening lines quoted. “There is only one liberty,” wrote Camus in his Notebooks, “to come to terms with death. After which, everything is possible.” Feeling free and charged up after their performance, I wanted instead to raise my fist in the air and collectively take on the world.
What I admired about The Danger Ensemble was that they seemed to be working at full pitch not merely to break the mould of expectation regarding a familiar cultural artefact, but to emulate the tentative, flowing, continually improvised balancing act of life itself. They were constantly allocating to themselves private time and space to breathe in an atmosphere which seemed despotically totalitarian and to represent their own quotidian lives post 9/11 where, as in Elsinore, the currency of real political debate appears debased and scenarios for real planetary apocalypse abound. As a company, they seem to be exploring that friable edge which divides the tolerable from the intolerable, but they’re equally committed to physical precision, lucidity and direct expression that comes from training in the disciplines of Butoh and Suzuki method. The Danger Ensemble has created, in my opinion, a definitive homage to the tragic muse for its own generation.
La Boite Indie and The Danger Ensemble, The Hamlet Apocalypse; director, designer Steven Mitchell Wright, dramaturg Chris Becky, performers Katrina Cornwell, Mark Hill, Robbie O’Brien, Noa Rotem, Polly Sara, Dave Sleswick, Peta Ward, lighting design Ben Hughes, sound design Dane Alexander, costume designer Georgina Blythe, producer Katherine Quigley; La Boite Theatre Company @ The Roundhouse, Brisbane, Aug 24-Sept 10; www.dangerensemble.com/
This article first appeared in rt e-dition sept 6.
