Subtlemost Sound Force: An Interview with Noé Cuéllar

April 13, 2011 · Print This Article

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.

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.

Interview with Jose Muñoz, author of “Cruising Utopia” and SAIC Visiting Artist Lecturer

February 7, 2011 · Print This Article

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.

BAS Halloween Watch: See Frankenstein Performed by The Hypocrites at the MCA

October 12, 2009 · Print This Article

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.

Justin Cooper, A 65 Million Year Old Dinosaur , and Thomas Hobbes Walk Into the MCA…

July 28, 2009 · Print This Article

I just got back from Justin Cooper’s performance at the MCA. His week long series entitled Vay Kay is part of the Here/ Not There series. Tonight’s performance was titled Crater. This performance involved a sound piece in the twelve by twelve space that was activated by people moving in front of the sensors. About 30 minutes into the sound piece the performance moved outside where there was a match between a 65 Million Year Old Dinosaur and British philosopher Thomas Hobbes

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

Kalup Linzy in 500 Words

June 18, 2009 · Print This Article

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.