Garbled Repetition

I'm thinking about the use of "extreme" repetition in movement phrasings. I'm interested in the processes of imperfection and ambiguity which are inherent in human reiteration. The forces of physical inertia, a mutation through fatigue or boredom, change through slurring, blurring, mumbling... The possibilities of scrambled or emergent meanings, a multiplicity of hearings and interpretations.
Another album on heavy rotation in the studio lately has been Radiohead's Hail to the Thief. Previously, listening to their other albums, I've been put off by Thom Yorke's nasal vocals and the anthem-rock theatrics, but this one has been hitting some pleasure centers. In the course of one song, there's the repetition of a phrase, "It should be ringing..." (it should be raining, it looks like rain in.. It could be Reagan...) The slurred and circular performance allows variations in emphasis, emotion and a linguistic imprecision. I want it to continue, to be more extreme, to become uncomfortable, to push and pull with equal pressure.
Toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat tou boat toubut toiu bout.

Narrative Tangentiality

Finished composing for and performing Montauk with the Liz Gerring Dance Co. and now back from the run at the Baryshnikov Art Center in NYC. Returning to the ink paintings and now working with black acrylic, india ink, and a bit of charcoal in addition to the blue ink, and larger pieces of paper (I'll post some new pictures soon). It feels great to be back in the studio. Listening to Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives - two or three "episodes" each day... Despite my deep admiration for a few particular pieces (Automatic Writing, The Wolf Man, and especially In Sara Mencken Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women), it's only my second time listening through this sprawling opera.

Robert Ashley's music is a wonderful example of ambiguity - structures as non-structures. There's a quality of endless wandering, limitlessness. I admire this quality because my own music seems to become, in the course of things, resolutely unambiguous. In reaction to or against the segmented, ordered quality of my recent performance piece, Flock & Tumble, I've been interested in shifting more towards structures of narrative ambiguity and thinking about what that might mean in the upcoming project with Linda Austin.
Ashley seems to have recognized some hidden attribute of television, some rarely utilized possibility for expansion. Over the winter break and in the midst of snow storms, Kelly and I watched the first and second seasons of Mad Men, which might serve as another example (though far more conventional).

The potential within the framework of a television series is something Twin Peaks first noticed and utilized in a self-conscious way. The open-ended aspect of television gives the possibility of endless narrative expansion, something that Mad Men uses to create a network of characters and psychologies rather than a narrative arc, following endless side-paths within an established group of elements. A revelation of character rather than plot, a deepening of interior space. Very little happening on the surface, but great depths below.

Perhaps this all has something to do with a working method that starts without possibly knowing the ending. A reliance on brainstorming, automatic writing... A faith in the generative properties of the network.
Soap operas take this tangentiality to absurd extremes, but with reversed emphasis - lots happening on the surface and very little below. This was recognized and parodied by Lynch in Twin Peaks, and even mirrored by the television show within the television show (Invitation to Love). A certian degree of amnesia is necessary to continue.
Perfect Lives remains slippery in every way. The established elements of piano, organ and voice are a kind of changing same, constantly flowing, a pattern of syllables... Even instability is unstable, as short "songs" emerge and then disintegrate. A few phrases, names and places stick. Perhaps patterns would emerge with repeated listenings, and I would like to finally see the video, which is now available on dvd.
Robert Ashley also talks about engaging different attention spans, something I've been pondering lately. I'm wondering what the effect would be of extreme repetition of dance events, "looping" single actions or phrases of various lengths, working with the varieties of memory - immediate, short term and long term. (Does anyone have the approximate lengths of these categories, neurologically-based?) What would be the difference between a five second "loop", repeated many times, and a 30-second "loop" or a two-minute "loop"? Or loops that tangent partway through their repetition... I'm interested in the live repetition of human gestures because of the inherent impossibility of exact repetition. I'm interested in using this repetition as a way of accessing the brutality of separation, the way that violence becomes aesthetic.

A few from the new series, ink on paper.

Flock & Tumble!

... is almost here. Our first rehearsal in the space is on election night (what was I thinking?) At this point, I'm confident we'll have a reason to celebrate.
This performance feels like a celebration, a very formal one. I intend for humor to pierce the weight at all points. Kathleen and Rikki of Woolly Mammoth have given brilliant performances as hypnotized hand signalers. I can't wait to see and hear it all together.

See you there?
www.brownpapertickets.com/event/42133
November 7, 8, 9 8:00 pm
doors, drinks and hors d’oeuvres at 7:30 pm
AudioCinema, 226 SE Madison

Jerry Hunt, 1980

This is taken from a 1980 KPFA interview of Jerry Hunt with Charles Amirkhanian which can be found here.

About performance...
"I like the signing of sounds. And for performance particularly, I don’t think of myself so much as doing performance art as just a concert with the signing of the sounds in a variety of ways. It’s like maybe a color added to the surface of the sound in some way, so that people are not just sitting there watching me work gadgetry. In my mind it makes the rhythm structure of what interests me clearer, it makes the intent become more direct and more immediate, at least on some level. To my mind it does. I like that sense of directness and immediacy."

About titles...
"I like to have a certain formality in respect to both myself and the world and that’s just one clue to it - it’s not the only clue. There was a time when I thought, “Oh, I’ll just call it ‘Turkey Trot No. 1’, ‘Turkey Trot No. 2’”. It’s just not in my character nor in my mind to be able to do it that way. There are certain formalities. The titles are representations of layers of those formalities, because there’s a certain distance that I like. I’m not very interested in music, in a way, you know! ...or in art or technology or anything. Why still do it? Maybe that’s a little clue into what keeps my interest going. But each one I see as just continuing folds of concerns of mine. And if I don’t start with the abstraction, I’m hopelessly lost later. It just keeps it clear in my own brain, and I think it suggests a little bit. I don’t want a title to be too suggestive, but I like it to be sufficiently suggestive to give people indications of what orientation, what position they might expect from me, at some point. I realize that frequently what actually happens and the expectation of the title is very distant. Which is at once intentional and is not. I both intend and I don’t. Because I’m obsessed with the idea that there is nothing at the bottom of anything. And if there’s not, then why not? Why not?"

These have been my thoughts precisely. I'm sympathetic to the idea of the work being "bottomless and without foundation" (as he says elsewhere in the interview). I share this fascination with the way a work can be simultaneously empty and full. It's a construction which rests (in both formation and reception) on contingency, and yet it works.
Also, I have been searching for a way to articulate this reversal of what seems to be the usual relationship between sound and performance. In placing the sound as the primary component, the visual and performance ideas are layers which emphasize and make clear the rhythmical character of the piece, unfolding out from the sound.

And in the music itself, I admire Jerry Hunt's way of creating formless form, in which events or moments of unity seem to be like ripples on the pool of larger movement. And his use of voice, and acoustic noise-makers such as rattles, and his operatic/absurdist use of sources such as George Elliot and John Dee... much more to explore here.

proximation

I'm considering the space between notes (bursts, iterations, events) as a moment of charge. Utilizing an erotics of distance: the use of the call to connect across space, invigorating a shared medium (atmosphere). The space between is a charged waiting - a poised position. Balanced by an erotics of proximity: the "tuning-in" of closeness, the ways of changing and being changed by those who are near.
Within the model of compression/expansion, each individual is charged with the minor catastrophe of breaking a silence, instigating a tumbling chain of events. On an individual level, the compression occurs as a small loss of self-awareness around the burst, following by an expansion outward with the ear.
Distance and proximity interact as a self-organizing form. This is my interest in a school of fish or flock of swallows. I am con-fusing spatial distance as an analogy (map) with temporal distance (between events). Always staying near, neither too close nor too far. Keeping an always-same but always-changing form, self-maintaining but allowing for rupture at any moment. A proximation of form.

The Promenade crew (from L - R) Bill Will - installation, Bill Boese - light, Elise Bartow - coordination, Linda K. Johnson - dance/performance, Seth Nehil - sound.
South Waterfront Neighborhood Park (SW Moody & Curry), July 19th
Gathering beings an hour before sunset - bring a picnic!