Pyle as the princess and Jules Skloot as the tranimal in The Firebird. Photo by Christy Pessagno

“O Rosalind, these trees shall be my books. / And in their barks my thought I’ll character, / That every eye in which this forest looks / Shall see thy virtue witness’d everywhere. / Run, run, Orlando! Carve on every tree / The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she”  (As You Like It, Act III, scene ii, l. 1-10).

This week I’m posting something quick and slight — more of a go-to, actually. Because I came across a great interview on the Movement Research blog that Marissa Perel conducted with Katy Pyle about her Ballez performance, The Firebird. “It’s a redefined, more theatrical, and queered ballet. It takes a lot from ballet vocabulary, but it’s exploring new gender roles, new gender identities, and features queer women, lesbians, and trans people. It’s a Ballez” (Movement Research). Their conversation inspired me for so many reasons — on the one hand it sounds like a performative embodiment of hybridity from the way the piece exemplifies gender fluidity, to the way it borrows from multiple styles and approaches to dance (and particularly ballet), to the fact that there is a “transanimal” (what a lovely creature!). But then too, I have been extending an essay about artist residencies in the woods and how they are contingent to the city. In Pyle’s piece, her Princess protagonist “is really chasing the transanimal, which we don’t necessarily associate with femininity and masculinity. And, she’s a lesbian princess. She’s recently divorced, you know. She’s starting out on a journey away from this life of privilege and heteronormative culture to find what she really wants and what would really feel right for her. So, she goes into the woods [laughs]. That’s where you go to figure things out” (MR). From my experience I visiting ACRE last summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about of the “woods” and what their role is in the creative process. It brings up all these old high school memories about our day-long slog of an annual Shakespeare Festival (every English class in the school acted out a scene from Shakespeare; it was always part pain and part pleasure and very certainly a suspension of reality, given that the whole school spent six hours together in the auditorium). Woods and islands were frequently reoccurring settings that always offered insight and transformation because they provided remote locations that resisted otherwise predominant moires.

The setting of action in As You Like It takes place in the Forest of Arden. While the characters are still subject to the laws and politics of their court, (for instance, Rosalind has fled for political reasons), the forest enables a suspension of civilized reality. Once inside the forest, characters can reinvent themselves: women can be men and fools can be wise. Rosalind transforms herself into a man creating an overarching and poetic tension  around gender relations. Hierarchical power is unsettled and reexamined, as is the characters’ relationship to their environment. Trees become books, becoming directly accessible. The context of the forest highlights a separate kind of truth which is eventually brought back to the city and grafted onto urban society. It is as though the forest is a dream state, wherein characters engage and resolve their problems intuitively, in ways that were not possible in the rational, domesticated world. The literal Forest of Arden in England, not far from Shakespeare’s birth place, lies in the center of England. Curiously, no Roman road ever passed through its wood. Rather roads were built around its bounds. Even in geographic reality the forest seems to maintain a space beyond rational enterprise, an undomesticated plot of land that resists easy passage, while nevertheless  being contextualized (or flanked) by the very politics it suspends. There is a constant relationship between the conscious and the subconscious, the wilds of the wood and the rubric of inherited society.

Related Posts

• Sense as Consenus: An Interview with Justin Cabrillos
• FJORDS!
• Like Pages They Flip Depending: An Interview with Vanessa Place
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• Episode 330: Carolee Schneemann

The Poetry Foundation shows are mostly sold out (though day-of tickets may be available at the door). Schomburg’s tumblr hints that an encore show may take place on Monday. I’ll update this article if/when more specifics are revealed. Tour dates can be found here.

Schomburg’s poems have been published all over and with good reason.  FJORDS Volume 1 will be released by Black Ocean on March 5th. Additionally, he is one of the three editors behind the small poetry press Octopus Books, co-programs the Bad Blood reading series in Portland, and teaches at Portland State University.

I was privileged to experience Vegter’s site-specific composition/installation for the Chicago Composer’s Orchestra in the Palm House of the Garfield Park Conservatory in December of 2011. The work utilized the tremendous room, with subtle, textural tones mirroring the space’s. His work with Manual Cinema (Julia Miller, Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, and Vegter) has included the much heralded Ada/Ava and The Ballad of Lula del Ray. This is their first collaboration with the Chicago Q Ensemble, whose Ellen McSweeney I interviewed about the collaborative process.

Please describe the kind of work you typically do.

As a quartet, we perform a combination of contemporary music — often by Chicago composers, like Kyle — and works from the classical string quartet repertoire, like Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich. That’s the stuff we got all our advanced degrees studying.

Our process is pretty simple: we’ll rehearse several pieces of music intensively, just the four of us, for a period of months before presenting it to the public. Occasionally we’ll play for coaches (master teachers/mentors) to help us take the performance to the highest possible level.

While collaborating for FJORDS is definitely the most “outside the classical music box” project we’ve ever been part of, collaboration is a part of our mission statement, so it’s very much in line with that our priorities are and the direction we want to go in.

Please describe how this project came to be and how you became involved.

Kyle and I first met while working together on a concert for Homeroom — I played one of his pieces. I later interviewed Kyle for my blog and we became friends! My first Manual Cinema experience was The Ballad of Lula Del Ray. I was completely enchanted. I was so mesmerized by the show that I had absolutely no idea what was happening; for example, I didn’t realize the puppets were being manipulated live. So I’ve been a fan of their magic-making for a long time.

When it occurred to me that Chicago Q could actually collaborate with Manual Cinema, I called Kyle out of the blue one day and basically said, “We have to do this!” It turns out it was the perfect time for them to start thinking about it, as they were looking to do a more music-centered project. We started meeting together — all nine of us! — to talk about what the collaboration would look like. It just goes to show you that sometimes it’s work making that call

I think when Kyle told us about Zach’s book, FJORDS, the project really just started to take off. All the creative minds of Manual Cinema were drawn in by his work and started to create amazing worlds around it. On our end, we began to get to know Kyle and his music better.

Please discuss, as you’d like, adaptation, adaptation as collaboration, and collaboration.

Funny enough, around the time that you emailed me, I wrote a blog post about why collaboration is so challenging, and so essential, for classical music ensembles. In our field, there’s a conservative attitude that if you’re playing a great musical masterpiece, you shouldn’t need anything else on the stage. There’s a fear that other elements will distract the listener from the greatness of the music. This project is working from the opposite assumption: that, if you do it right, we CAN marry elements of theater, poetry, and chamber music in a way that lifts them all up, as opposed to cheapening them.

One of the sad things about being a classical violinist is that you aren’t often treated as creative artist. You receive a score, and your job is to execute it as written. Sure, there’s some flexibility, and your technical knowledge and performance ability matter a great deal. But as performers, we often enter the picture after the creative process is over.

This project has started to defy that “post-creative” role a little bit. Kyle has been exceptionally open to our feedback and ideas about what he’s writing. And now that we’re rehearsing with Manual Cinema, in front of the screen, we are absolutely a part of the creative process. Because we know Kyle’s scores extremely well, we have strong ideas about what the mood of the music is, and how it can help increase the drama and emotional resonance of what’s on the screen.

When Q and Manual Cinema first sat down together, I declared that I wanted us to be creative partners, not mere technicians, as instrumentalists are often asked to be. That dream has totally come true and it’s an amazing experience so far.

What are the ideas, stories and interior logics of this work about which you felt most strongly? How important to you is it that certain elements of the source were carried through to the performance? What is most challenging/exciting about the wordless rendering of a poem? 

We’ve really deferred to Kyle and MC on these fronts, and we weren’t really a part of the adaptation process.

Music and poetry have been working together for a long, long time. I find when I read a great poem, it’s a like a tiny capsule that evokes an entire world. There’s so much AROUND the text of the poem, so much just outside the boundaries of what’s been written. Music is a natural way to express that world that’s being evoked: the textures, feelings, colors. I think Kyle did an amazing job creating a musical world for each poem, and it’s a lot of fun for us to embody that world as we play our instruments.

Much of the revitalized Poetry Foundation’s mission is to “discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience.” While this doesn’t specifically mention finding new forms and modes for poetry (as a way of enabling its position before a larger audience), I’m curious how conscious you are of trying to expand poetry’s audience. And, relatedly, how conscious you are of trying to expand contemporary classical/string music’s audience. 

Absolutely. Expanding the audience for contemporary music/classical music/the string quartet is probably the most important part of our mission.

It’s amazing how much excitement this project has generated. People are really intrigued by the possibilities of the project. And I think there’s a tremendous excitement for us, for Zach, for MC to be engaged in something that’s very ambitious and very different for us. And it’s amazing how much we are all benefiting from the risks we’ve taken. All four shows are now sold out, and hundreds of folks — who might never have come to a regular string quartet concert — are going to be engaged with our playing. The project has been a huge learning experience for me about the power of working together as a team — not going it alone, but finding others to support you and work with you.

Should more string quartets tour? Should string quartets tour more?

Sadly we aren’t touring with the show — they’ll tour with the amazing recording of us that Kyle just produced! But we definitely would like to tour more. Turning our ensemble into a full-time job that can sustain us is a gradual process, but we’re getting there!

Another tidbit about touring: I think people in string quartets are a little fussier than rock bands. Sounding “perfect” and being at your best is a strong pressure in classical music, so we somehow think that touring should involve comfortable travel and accommodations. We should learn from the whole “band in a van” thing, get our hands a little dirtier, and we’d probably tour more.

What (historical) collaborations informed this project? Are there other productions involving/engaging poetics that you felt were especially useful? 

I like knowing we’re in good company with that ensembles like Fifth House, who are very committed to “musical storytelling” and having huge success with it. I’m inspired by some of the more off-the-walls collaborations that eighth blackbird has done. Obviously, the Kronos Quartet were a huge breakthrough force; all the crazy stuff they’ve done over the past few decades has paved the way for classical ensembles to venture into new territory, both musically and theatrically.

But honestly, I’m still figuring out what our role is in this show. Are we in the pit at an opera house? Onstage movement artists with instruments? I think we’re making our own way, trying to figure out what’s going to create the best possible experience for the audience.

Related Posts

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• Ballez in the Woods

"Troupe" photo by John W. Sisson, Jr.

Many of these discussions about hybridity seem to center on the borders of identity: those places we feel something might end so that another substance, or self can begin. Language is essential in the communication of those boundaries; it enables a consensual agreement. The very act of naming, for instance, differentiates one body from another. I am curious about how language is embodied and how an artist invested in movement-as communication might explore that position. I thought I could interview performance artist, Justin Cabrillos. He is particularly focused on how the body and language relate: what seemed like an additional progression from my last discussion with Vanessa Place. Drawing on elements of dance, performance art, poetry, and sound art, explores an inefficient use of breath, the valleys of nonsense and physical exertion. Cabrillos was an IN>TIME Incubation Series artist-in-residence at the Chicago Cultural Center, and a 2011 LinkUP Artist at Links Hall. He recently collaborated with Every House Has a Door in a performance for artCENA in Rio De Janeiro. He is the recipient of a Greenhouse grant from the Chicago Dancemaker’s Forum.

Caroline Picard: I’m interested in how you integrate language and the body: there is something about this process that makes a lot of sense to me, in so far as both the body and language are mechanistic. In your performances, you seem to embody the two at once, calling attention to the ways in which the body gives life/animates language. At the same time, I feel like you also illustrate a kind of twitch or glitch in both, as they merge  — is there some way that you could talk about this?

"Faces, Varieties, Postures" photo by John W. Sisson, Jr.

"Faces, Varieties, Postures" photo by John W. Sisson, Jr.

CP:  What is the function of breath in your work?

"Troupe." photo by John W. Sisson, Jr.

Related Posts

• Retracing Steps Along The Great Forest Highway
• New ‘Centerfield’ on Art:21 Blog | Interview with Matthew Goulish
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• The Public is the Teacher: An interview with Justin Cabrillos

⚫■▼ Video Still. 2011

In thinking about hybridity, performance artist Sebastian Alvarez seemed like an important person to talk to. For instance, I saw a piece of his at the Hyde Park Art Center in which a series of different people looked up at the camera, their faces surrounded in a sea of dirt. They seemed to be part of the earth, speaking through it, while nevertheless remaining distinct. In other work Alvarez has done, he photographs the body mid-flight, sometimes it is ascending, sometimes it hovers almost perpendicular to the ground, frozen impossibly in defiance against gravity. I find his work to be tremendously hopeful, walking a line between the tension of consumer audiences and transformative experience. Where do we position ourselves? Are those distinctions (between body and earth, self and other) as vivid as we would like to presume?

Caroline Picard: What happened to your impression of dirt once you ate it in public?

Sebastian Alvarez: Soil is always hard to grasp. Especially if it comes from Central Park in New York. The first time I tried eating soil was, like many of us, at a very early age. Unfortunately, I do not have a clear memory of that moment but I remember seeing a photograph of my face decorated with dirt around my mouth. Perhaps it was really chocolate but I prefer to think that it was soil because I was in a park. Years later, my second interaction with this organic matter happened in a desperate situation as I was hitchhiking to Cuzco, Peru from the south of Brazil. It was in a late afternoon after not being able to find a ride nor anything to eat. Upon arriving to a small farm in an isolated area, I stole some potatoes I found laying on a piece of burlap fabric. After franticly running without any reason — since nobody saw me — I stopped away from the farm and contemplated the three little sad potatoes in my dirty hands. Having no utensils to boil the rather miniscule potatoes, I gave a bite to one of them, realizing that I could not even chew it. Obviously, they were hard as rocks due to the cold weather. So after spitting the tuber out, I craved something soft and tasty. Without thinking it twice, I grabbed a bunch of soil with my left hand I took it into my mouth, and I clearly remember thinking that I wanted this soil to be delicious and nutritious. I thought it so emphatically that I could no longer pay attention to the particles going through my throat. Its texture was actually soft and pleasant on account of the fact that it was topsoil and it did not contain any pieces of rock. One handful was enough to bring me into a silent state of mind where I began perceiving my surroundings as a nurturing space. Seconds after this peaceful sensation, my mind started sending me the common human thoughts that would populate any civilized person’s mind: What am I doing? I really need to find something to eat, and am I going to get sick or die? All these questions kept reconfiguring themselves in my head as I felt the satisfactory sensation of having experienced something transformative. Hours later after walking on a small road again, I was picked up by a generous farmer with an old truck and driven to the nearest town, Mirador Caracoto. During this micro-road trip, I kept the soil incident to myself. Once in the town, I was able to sell a couple of jackets I had in my backpack and eventually made it to my “final destination.” I tell this story because it reveals values that are central to my art practice. Journeying as an exploration of the unknown, acknowledgment of ignorance, and transformation are points that guide and organize my understanding of what I do as an artist.

Five years later when I became acquainted with performance art I thought of contextualizing my experience with soil in a “performance video.” However, when I did it for the camera I became very conscious of the situation I was creating and how contrived it was. The scenario I constructed was completely different. This time I was in New York, and created a prologue to accompany the act of eating dirt. The first part of the video was about the occasional nauseous feeling I have when being overexposed to advertisements and consumer culture. The second part is about entering a public park (Central Park) to eat soil. The area where my friendly cameraperson and I spontaneously decided to shoot was actually closed for maintenance. I obviously felt tempted to jump the fence and ended up removing a piece of grass to eat a small portion of the aforementioned substance. A few pedestrians walking their dogs saw me and noted the presence of the camera, creating that typical mediated environment/situation that weakens the authenticity of such normally undocumented events. I never felt the same serenity as that first time at the farm again because I became too aware of my actions, and slightly paranoid to be penalized for jumping the fence and defacing public property.

Being born in a culture that has always defined Earth as a mother and the Sun as a father, I developed an appreciation and respect for these beliefs. However, when the Mother Earth icon was imported into western culture, it became a component of the linguistic structure of patriarchal dominance. Thus, perpetuating the image of the mother as unconditionally generous, fertile and inexhaustibly abundant.  When I moved to the United States, one of the things that I paid attention to in language was the relation between the word “dirt” and “dirty,” especially because dirt is often used interchangeably with the word soil. So, whether soil is dirt or an aspect of Mother Earth is personally irrelevant, the essential part to me is how the metaphor that defines the relationship between us and the “natural world” creates a different engagement with our surroundings. Perhaps, this is why I find the metaphor of “eating soil as a way of reconnecting with a source” fascinating. For instance, if you research some of the cultures that have embraced geophagia — that is the practice of eating earthy or soil-like substances such as clay and chalk — you will find out that the elements that make up soil are potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, iron, and manganese which are also present in the human body. In many parts of the developing world there is earth even available for purchase that is intended for consumption; they consider geophagy to be a beneficial, nutritional approach to promote well-being. Of course, I am aware that the contemporary condition of soil in many places of the world is deplorable and highly toxic. I am further aware that there is a significant difference between the soil I ate on a small farm in Peru and the dirt from a metropolitan public park where there is the potential encounter with dog excrement, 70′s heroin needles, or fingers of gangster victims that did not pay their dues.

Stills from Westoxication. 2006. NY

CP: Is there a difference between performance and presentation for you?

SA: Although these two are similar in that they both comprise an event in which an individual or group of individuals behave in a particular way for another group of individuals, they are slightly different to me in terms of how they make the recipient individuals feel. Presentations, as we usually know them, carry a didacticism that make us focus on the content of what is being presented rather than the presenter. Performances, on the other hand, bring our attention to the performer (his/her physical, emotional, and kinesthetic characteristics that I perceive as organic) and the contextual features around him/her or them (architecture and props, which I perceive as inorganic, when they happen indoors). After engaging into different forms of investigation (both formally and informally) about performative genres (which I perceive as modes of communication) I see them as forms of channeling energy. Today, one can play semantically in order to find new possibilities, and expand upon notions. For instance, one could say performers perform, and presenters present or performers present and presenters perform. One could also think performances present performers, presentations perform presenters, and so on. To me, presenting implies a detachment from what is being presented. It is a humbler approach to communicating an idea or intention. Most religious and devotional rituals involve presenting an offering (whether something tangible or intangible) to a worshipped being. This makes me ponder the idea of the audience as a worshipped entity receiving the offerings of a performer. In any case, however the performers or presenters decide to interact with their audience (whether they are physically present or not), I believe it is important to allow the energy that is being conjured to be transmitted as intended, unless they are dealing with unknown forces outside their cognition and this is the intention.

CP: How do you consider the audience/performer relationship? Is this a dynamic that is porous? And where is the power located? 

SA: There a long list of sociologists, philosophers, dramaturges, performance theorists and researchers who have dealt with the audience/performer subject in multiple ways. To me, it is important to have an understanding of the origins of theater, performing arts, sports, and social gatherings as well as how the relationship between the performer and the audience changed into one of producer and consumer. There are specific instances that mark the breaking down of traditional boundaries between actors and spectators. For instance, the formation of the Living Theater in New York by Julian Beck and Judith Malina changed how the audience was engaged through direct personal and physical contact. Likewise, when Brazilian theater director Augusto Boal (influenced by theorist and educator Paulo Freire) developed the Theatre of the Oppressed, within which performance was intended to entertain, educate, and raise consciousness. I am obviously omitting the extensive list of people, events, movements, and disciplines that have contributed to what we categorize today as relational aesthetics, participatory art, and social practices. However, whether one is aware of this information or not, these contributions are already engrained in the sphere of human cognition.

But anyway, most of us with Internet access are aware of the omnipresence of videos depicting different kind of events, open source lectures, webinars, presentations, performances, and practices that share the process of how subjects and objects are made. The ones showing rows of seated spectators facing a raised platform particularly fascinate me. In the broadest terms, the “performer-presenter” may be seen as an enthusiast, or critic of society. In ⚫■▼, one of my current projects in process, I explore this setup, the body language of the presenter and the audience, and their potential to alienate. From my perspective, presenters perform an almost priestly role when in front of a large screen or projection that informs the audience or devotees in a semiotic mass. However one sees it, I think there is a consensus about the need to gain greater awareness of the implications of systematic image distribution in power-saturated contexts and human relations – particularly in this media-laden society.

⚫■▼(live) Video still. 2011. Chicago.

CP:  What is the relationship between shape and identity? I’m partly asking because the way you use shapes quite often in your work–circles and triangles and squares…

SA: In this project, I began by acknowledging these historic associations:

a. the circle, the one, the point, the center, the ellipse, the circus, the circuit, the speaker, the divine, the sun, the transmutation, the emotion, the liquid, the circulatory system.

b. the square, the quartet, the structure, the area, the perimeter, the room, the site, the group, the audience, the collective, the concentration, the cardinal points, the mundane, the solid, the digestive system.

c. the triangle, the trio, the creation, the interaction, the elements, the magic, the media, the message, the subject, the intellect, the illumination, the direction, the gas, the nervous system.

1. the logo: the word, the discourse, the argument, the rhetoric, the religion, the emblem, the identity, the transcultural diffusion, the union and interrelation of three physical states of water (solid, liquid, and gaseous).

Logos.

The logo (1.) is an inverted 17th century “sign” that illustrates the blending of geometric shapes, and elemental symbols. Then, it was used by medieval alchemists to represent the elements and forces needed for magical work in order to reach physical and spiritual transformation, and immortality. Today, these concerns are that of transhumanists who explore bio-enhancement technologies (intellectual and physical) and the elimination of aging. Some even seek the elimination of death such as Ray Kurzweil and his sympathizers. Whether we like it or not, our human condition is transforming and non-biological intelligences are growing exponentially.

Adopting the alchemical sign as a logo/brand is a way of bringing attention to the subject of transformation. To me, this is a way of coming to terms with a personal feeling that I think we all share: the feeling of being driven by a larger force beyond one’s control. When appropriating the alchemical sign as a logo I thought of myself as a corporate force that imparts, shares, and distributes information. Using the alchemical symbol upside down is my way of acknowledging a return to the basic, to innocence. What I mean by basic is my prelinguistic life, before I was educated. Hence, I am interested how we educate the “uneducated,” how infants acquire language, and how we are constrained in our use of language by our particular social and psychological realities.

The inspiration for ⚫■▼ emerged after watching several hours of web conferences, and online lectures on subjects I am passionate about. Also contributing to the impetus for the project were my notes and memories on how I have been feeling inside authoritarian architecture — mostly churches and military sites, classrooms, and various institutional sites since childhood. Some memories, which I perceive as “light,” are more personal, comical and embarrassing; for instance, when things collapsed in strictly controlled situations or in demonstrations of vulnerability in public. The other memories, which I perceive as “dark,” are aggressive and fear inciting; for example, acts of civic disobedience and public panic. Here, I specifically refer to the attacks of the two main rebel groups, Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, who operated most forcefully in their effort to destabilize and overthrow the Peruvian government.

I also include my memories as an audience member in large sport events, massive music concerts, raves, mosh pits, in addition to intimate-level events such as presentations/performances in small venues, galleries, and studios. All these social assemblages (cultural or sub-cultural) are highly affected by the architecture in which they take place. I like to think about the physical states of water — liquid, solid, and gaseous — as an analogy that provides a different way of understanding different types of social gatherings. Consequently, I think of water containers, and temperature. What happens when you boil water? What happens when you freeze water? Can certain places solidify us? Which places keep us moving and flowing? In what place do we boil and become gaseous? How is in charge of the temperature?

Online, we articulate ourselves as databases in social networks. In doing so, we use our names as our brand, our logo. I began paying attention to this when I started a blog called Wanderlustmind where I was aiming to collect relevant information and archive my digressions over the Internet. By using the template provided by the semantic publishing platform, I became statistically aware of my “followers’” locations, their traffic, and their preferences. Similarly, when performing or witnessing a performance, I also pay attention to the structural characteristics of an audience. This makes me wonder if blogging has awakened a desire to know more about my audience or if it is a natural tendency I have. Regardless, once I wanted to “boost my traffic,” I opened a page for my blog in the popular “Book of Faces.” Here, as part of a community of millions of sentient beings entrapped in a platform created by the idiosyncrasy of a Harvard sophomore, I pondered existentialism once again and therefore the questionnaire began. What behavior am I adopting? Which model am I following? Am I becoming a hybrid of machine and organism? Am I aware of what produces major changes in my cognition? Am I really able to perceive this transformation during my lifetime? Did I abandon the religion I was brought up in so that I can be indoctrinated into a new one prophesying technological utopianism? Will my grandchildren meet humans who were born in times where the Internet did not exist? Is it worth having children considering the current conditions of the media environment? Will I bio-engineer my own children? Do I already have children? Are they blogs or social networks that I maintain daily? What do I feed them? Is my affection enough as a simple XOXO?

As I press the keyboard and quantify myself through a luminescent screen that stores binary numbers and manipulates data, I associate my writing (or your reading) to the comfort and anonymity of a passive audience member sitting in the dark. Obviously, as you read these words in a rectangular display composed of liquid crystals (that is if you did not use a inkjet or laser printer to print this on paper), there are people around the world who are still reading books illuminated by a candle. Should everyone use the Internet? Are there other forms of networking we are ignoring or dismissing? Should indigenous people conform to the dominating attitude of the patriarchic media? Can these groups participate in the decision making process of how technology should operate? Should cultures that have not come up with “new technologies” be consigned to history? Wouldn’t you be concerned if the same nations that brought you sugar, processed foods, GMO’s, and mass pollution were offering you new useful technologies?

⚫■▼ Video still. 2011.

Related Posts

• Sense as Consenus: An Interview with Justin Cabrillos
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Our latest “Centerfield” column posted today on Art:21 blog…make sure to check it out! Caroline Picard interviews Matthew Goulish, co-founder of the collaborative performance group Every house has a door. A brief excerpt follows; go to Art:21 to read the piece in full!

This June, I saw a performance by Every house has a door, a collaborative group founded by Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish in 2008 to “create project-specific collaborative performances with invited guests.” Having seen the piece in its intended context I want to ask questions outside its bounds. I appear like a kind of critic—a person asking the artist for something outside the presentation of a complete work. They’re Mending the Great Forest Highway is a dance for three men (Matthew Goulish, Jeff Harms, John Rich), with a DJ (Charissa Tolentino) and a narrator (Hannah Geil-Neufeld). It took place in the second floor gymnasium at Holstein Park in Chicago. Participants enacted a score of movement and sound presenting thematic elements from Hungarian folksongs, the tritone, and Benny Goodman. I wanted to ask about crisis, the framework of the theater, and the vocabulary of gestures—oblique responses to dance. Perhaps by asking them, perhaps through Goulish’s response, you might catch a ghost of the dance, left behind and buzzing in those summer-hot gymnasium walls.

Caroline Picard: How do you conceptualize the context for performance—do you frame it within traditional theater? How does time function within that context?

Matthew Goulish: Yes, theater as the container – less a set of conventions than of structures. Into it we place, let’s say, dance, writing, and music. We keep those elements distinct for clarity. Theater allows their coherent composition in time, the way the parts fit together. What happens first, second, last? What happens where? What echoes, and when? We have a sense of the parts in themselves (dance, music, writing), and another sense of the parts in relation as a cumulative experience (theater).

Can we call any room a theater if it contains theatrical events? What if we set up chairs in the afternoon at one end of a gymnasium that has windows and skylights? A little room noise might help the performance in unexpected ways. If we begin a 60-minute performance on June 18^th at 2:00 PM, where will the sun be in the skylight when we end? (Read more).

Related Posts

• Sense as Consenus: An Interview with Justin Cabrillos
• When The Object Presents Itself: An Interview with João Florêncio
• Retracing Steps Along The Great Forest Highway
• New ‘Centerfield’ Post on Art:21 Blog: Nicholas O’Brien on Gallery 400′s ‘File Type’
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photo by Jessica Turcios, 2010

I don’t remember the first time I met Noé, but I do remember the first time I saw his work. He and Joseph Clayton Mills performed in a dark room while standing opposite one another. Noé had an accordian strapped to his back and he played, very softly, while Joseph moved closer and farther away. Depending on their distance from one another, something concealed in Joseph’s hand (perhaps a hearing aid?) changed pitch. That performance epitomizes what I’ve seen of Noé’s work. He is dedicated to creating an awareness around silence within a performative space. The manifestation of the body, as a tool for the range of sound is integral, as are the relationships between performative bodies. His ability to instill the necessary parameters for such an awarenes–particularly in collaborative settings–is, to me, remarkable. I wanted to ask him more about that, but felt like direct questions would somehow do away with the very thing I was trying to ask. Consequently I tried to ask around the idea of silence, in order to better understand the way Noé uses sound. Because sound requires space, that seemed a good place to start.

Caroline Picard: How do you think of space?

Noé Cuéllar: Space evokes potential, but also communicates very directly to my sense of placement.  I think a sense of placement paves the way for the rest of the senses… it’s like a background sense made up by all the senses. I enjoy compound forms even when the individual pieces can still be recognized, in this case, space is the glue.

CP: It sounds like you think of space as something both sculptural (3-d figures) and linguistic (i.e. compound verbs). I appreciate the idea that space would be some experiential amalgam of those fields, even though I’m not quite sure how that would work. Is that what you mean? What do you mean by compound forms?

NC: Yeah, it’s like our sense of space is happening before we find out how we actually feel.  I’m in a room now, but a second ago I was just fine without actively thinking how comfortable it is.  I think of artistic expression as a compound form that always involves more than one thing.

CP: How do you use space as a medium for performance?

NC: The outcomes are quite unexpected when the sense of physical space is combined with the spatial sense of the actual sound.  I think my work most often expresses rigidity and confines, but space is what can allow [the work] to be experienced with more spread – perhaps more than I would choose to imply in the work itself.  I would say I focus primarily on sound, but with a sense of belonging in a space.

CP: I’d love to hear about some examples of how this has occurred in different pieces…

NC: Last year I composed Kilter, a piece for Jeb Bishop (trombone) with accordion, and two speakers inside boxes with hinges that would rattle.  I had in mind pressure and magnetic repulsion, yet the site-specific performance gave it a more wide-ranging effect, even in a dark, gritty basement with a short ceiling.

I’ve also been working with Joseph Kramer as Coppice, making site-specific installations and site-variable compositions, recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art, where the space was so large we were able to prevent any of our sounds from becoming part of a whole “surround experience,” but remain dislocated and in motion, scattering the perception of their source.

Coppice performing "Vinculum (Coincidence)", part of Without You I’m Nothing: Interactions, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Photo: Nathan Keay, © 2011 Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

CP: What, to you, is the relationship between the space inside of an instrument and the space around an instrument?

NC: The outside speaks for the inside.

CP: Can you talk a little bit about your collaboration with Joseph Clayton Mills? I was just thinking of the piece where you stood opposite one another and he kept opening and closing his hand, to change the frequency of buzz that magically manifested and grew stronger the closer you moved to one another. Then too, I think of more “traditional” pieces, where you sit down and perform for a definite period of time…

NC: Working with him is very factual, much in natural state.  We share a fascination with the attributes of objects and mechanisms, their hidden sound character and emotional effect.  It makes me think a lot about photography, which we also practice on our own.  A lot of what we do together is often a simple gesture, “subtlemost” more than “minimalist.”  I think we both find that simplicity very lasting.

CP: Will you talk a little bit about the way you use silence in your work?

NC: Silence is space but also glue.  It’s an encouragement that is easy to miss.  I like using silence as a way of pronouncing presence, or as a bearer of tension, or as a moment to coast on something that just happened.  Silences can be essentially the same in different moments, but it is how it is accessed that makes it feel different.  It carries the weight of the three tenses, it can be very prominent in itself, while also reflecting personal inner processes.  It can even be felt even when sounds are present.

CP: Do you feel like you are interrupting silence? Or are silence and sound variations within the same medium?

NC: My listening is constantly active, therefore I wouldn’t say I interrupt silence with my sound work, but rather bring the sound more forward to emphasize the moment.  Silence can be framed between those sounds, but in the end I feel like sound and silence are only evocations of a deeper level of silence – and of sound potential – more than what they simply sound like.  The repercussions of focused listening tap on that depth, beyond the temporal.

Performing "H" with Joseph Clayton Mills & Carol Genetti, part of Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain, curated by Jessica Turcios Photos: Seonaid Valiant, 2010

CP: I know that you regularly collaborate with other performers as well; sometimes you do so in a more traditional improvisation venue (like The Green Mill, for instance) and at other times you seem to locate yourself more definitively within a contemporary art/performance oeuvre. How do you negotiate those different contexts? Does a venue change the work you do?

NC: Venues shape the work more than they change it.  What feels right about performances in site-specific and gallery settings is that the audience-performer space is diffused, with more listening nodes available, and open to variation.  The stage setting has the advantage of centering a performance as a clear message.

CP: Can you talk a little bit about transcription? Or, how you translate and document your temporal, acoustic sound on a static piece of paper?

NC: I’m interested in some precise musical qualities, but also variable, interpersonal, implicit qualities that happen in the process of working one-on-one with a performer.  Transcription varies from one work to another; sometimes I don’t put anything on paper, or very little just for my own reminder.  When working with performers I let them write their own parts over a skeleton score I make for them. We talk, try, sharpen, and write.

CP: Do you use that score as a kind of document? I’m thinking about John Cage’s “score’s'” for instance; do they look like that? Or are they more traditional pages of notes?

NC: It’s a document of an idea but it’s interesting to use that word, especially when thinking of it as a document for a future event.  Sometimes they take a more traditional shape but with custom symbols, sometimes they’re just scribbles, and sometimes they’re graphic.

Drawing 2/3 from Harrow/Dormant (2010)

CP: Can you give me an example?

With Harrow/Dormant I wanted to figure out what my interpretation of a graphic score would be, and what it would be like to suggest sound from a more abstract visual departure.  I combined drawings with directions to set a structure on which the performers can stay afloat their own decisions. Julia Miller has been interpreting it with incredible tact several times now, as part of a study for a larger project of hers… which is great because multiple iterations reveal how sensitive interpretation is to one’s standpoint.

(See this video)

CP: How do you think about sound when it is happening?

NC: Sound is a constant vibration that stimulates our impulse to imagine, stir remembrance of events that perhaps haven’t quite happened to us directly.  It’s kind of way of keeping check of our experiential ability and our location.  It’s a way to be present and also to be somewhere else, beyond our windows.

CP: You enact such precision in your work; I’m trying to understand how you think about that precision, and how you locate the “action” of your work in time and space…so somehow, sound becomes the vehicle for that action, right?

NC: I regard presence and intention very highly as a basis.  In my mind those two things almost make sound all by themselves.

CP: But then what does that mean? For sound to be a vehicle? A vehicle for what?

NC: A vehicle for transportation…

CP: It’s also really interesting to think about intention—I’m not sure I understand what you mean by that…it sounds like you’re thinking of your mind as an auxiliary component—and extension of the instrument?

NC: My sister is a graphic designer, and browsed many art and design magazines when I was growing up.  I have many vivid memories of her explaining contemporary artworks to me and she would talk a lot about intention.  I remember there was an advertisement all white with only one small logo in the middle, and I asked her why they would waste so much space, and she pointed out that the blank space lead our eyes to the logo, that was the focus.  That got me thinking about doing only what felt like enough.  Insights like that built up very solidly, and I’m reminded of that particular one quite often.  The intentional framework for a message.

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The School of the Art Institute’s Visiting Artist Program kicks off its Spring 2011 series tonight with Jose Muñoz, chair of NYU’s Performance Studies department and the author of several books, including Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. (You can download a .pdf file of that book’s introduction here). The talk will take place at 6pm in the Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Drive. In advance of Professor Munoz’ talk, I asked him a few questions about his work and the performance artists who inspired it. I’m very grateful to him for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer them!

*******

Claudine Ise: Tell us a bit about what you plan to discuss during your lecture at the School of the Art Institute.

Jose Muñoz: I plan to present work that bridges Cruising Utopia and my next book project The Sense of Brown. In Cruising Utopia I considered the work and life of figures from the historical queer avant-garde. I will discuss the life and work of Warhol superstar Mario Montez. Montez collaborated with Warhol, Jack Smith, Ronald Tavel and many other key figures from that scene. But Montez dropped out of the art and performance scene in the 1970s. He has recently reemerged and has great stories to tell. I look to him as a “Wise Latina” which was a phrase used by republicans who attacked Sonia Sotomayor when she was nominated to The Supreme Court. I describe Montez as a Wise Latina because she made a sort of “sense” that I think is worth considering today.

CI: The prose style of your 2009 book “Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity” is at once poetic and deeply rousing. In particular, I’m enamored of this statement from your book’s Introduction:

“We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.”

I love the radical openness of that idea. Can you talk a bit about the ways in which you want to re/define the concepts of ‘hope’ and ‘utopia,’ particularly when it comes to queerness and what you describe as a ‘queer aesthetic’?

JM: I was advocating an idea of hope that refuses despair during desperate times. I reject naive hope and instead offer a version of hope that is counter measure to how straight culture defines our lives and the world. I was trying to describe an idea of utopia that is not just escapism. Queer art or queer aesthetics potentially offer us blueprints and designs for other ways of living in the world. In Cruising Utopia I look at performances and visual art that are both historical and contemporary. But what all the work has in common is the way it sketches different ways of being in the world.

CI: Which contemporary performance artists do you think best represent your idea that ‘hope’ can be more than just a critical affect, but can also present us with a viable methodology for mapping utopias?

JM: I am interested in so much work that happens under the rich sign of performance. For years I have been following the work of artists like Vaginal Davis whose performances always insists on another version of reality than the ones we are bombarded by. I could substitute Vag’s name in the previous sentence with that of artists like Nao Bustamente, Carmelita Tropicana, Dynasty Handbag, My Barbarian and so many other artists that I have encountered. I look forward to seeing more work that helps me glimpse something beyond the here and now.

Dynasty Handbag at Transmodern Festival, 2008.

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Ah, bloody ladies and their fucked-up bloody baby dolls. I’m still counting down the days to Halloween, and if I can find a babysitter of my own, I am so going to see this woman (actually, Stacy Stoltz as Elizabeth) up close and in person when The Hypocrites perform their version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at the MCA Chicago from October 21 – November 1. It will be enacted “in promenade,” which means that performers intermingle with audience member on the same stage. Blurbs the MCA:

Just in time for Halloween, acclaimed Artistic Director Sean Graney and The Hypocrites take on Mary Shelley’s classic novel for an adventurous retelling of Frankenstein. Graney’s world-premiere production is performed in promenade, which places the audience onstage amidst the actors, and combines his inventive and poetic adaptation with the famous 1931 film starring Boris Karloff.

Inspired by the vast scope of Shelley’s novel and the ideas of inventors like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, Graney draws from a variety of literary sources for his adaptation, including Macbeth, Prometheus Bound, Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, and ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford. Graney’s adaptation combines several historical versions of the gothic tale to craft a contemporary literary monster that captures the pure horror and chilling philosophy of creation carried out in the name of human advancement.

It’s like a high art version of Tony & Tina! But seriously, it’s always fun when audiences get a chance to wander around onstage while the performers do their thing–although I always wind up feeling weirdly embarrassed for the actors when I stand too close to them.  At any rate, you can watch a video of Hypocrities founder and Frankenstein director discussing his ideas about how theater relates to Frankenstein below; tickets are $20-25, for MCA members they’re $16-20, and the student rate is $10.

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via the MCA:
“This is an interactive deconstruction of a family vacation argument using four invisible laser beams which crisscross the space. With multiple viewers moving through the space, the vocal laser beams are activated at completely random intervals to create a fragmented cacophony that refers to the memory of past experiences.”

Justin Cooper: Vay Kay
July 28 – August 2
Justin Cooper presents four different performances: Crater, Sprinkle, Relax, and Crumple on the theme of the family summer vacation.

Museum of Contemporary Art
220 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611

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This months edition of Artforum’s 500 words comes from performance artist Kalup Linzy. The write up is totally worth checking out. I just spent the past hour or so watching Linzy’s videos on Youtube, really entertaining.

“I SHOT TWO MUSIC VIDEOS FOR PROENZA SCHOULER, basically responding to the clothes, and we’re doing a photo shoot. This is my first time working with high fashion. I’ve been researching photographs and looking at models; it’s all pretty edgy, so I don’t think the relationship between my work and Proenza Schouler is as distant as I originally thought. I’ve seen some pretty wild, risqué stuff in fashion photography. Now the question is: How can my work flow and meld into that?

I wasn’t planning to shoot as many videos as I shot for my first album, SweetBerry Sonnet. I was more interested in developing a live performance, but when Proenza Schouler came to me and asked me if I wanted to collaborate, the idea for the videos just came to me.”

Read the entire article here.

Make sure to check out Linzy’s Youtube page.
Linzy also has a documentary that will focus on his participation in Prospect 1.

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