The world grows colder. Nature slows, becomes static. The river connecting these cities ices over slowly, silently at night. Tires spin, stuck in ice ruts that will last until spring. Fewer bicyclists and pedestrians navigate the narrowing streets and sidewalks. We prepare to stay inside through longer nights, as the early arriving winter rudely awakens us from lingering fall. That stasis, that need to stay inside belies our need to connect, to draw close, especially in times of stress, in times of outside forces beating down our door, trying to force their way in. We need to be physically together to remember that beneath these layers are beating hearts and warm breaths.
Ryoji Ikeda’s superposition at the Walker Art Center united more than 20 projections and monitors, two live performers, multi-lingual Morse code, live video feeds, microfiche, a healthy dose of randomness. It confronts the body and mind, pushing them to the limits of comprehensibility. The audience was given earplugs to ease the high decibel audio, but the sound waves, the movement of air through the space physicalized every peak and valley of staccato clicks, blips, quantum particulates. My knowledge of quantum physics and mathematics is barely enough to bring the video and audio into focus. Scientific ideas bubble to the surface just enough to reveal there is something larger beneath the surface, but the technical mastery and deep knowledge embodied in the performance reinforce the barriers between audience members, reminding us that we are a part of systems whose logic is beyond what we think we know of Newton.
Ryoji Ikeda, superposition
The performers, Stephane Garin and Amélie Grould truly bring forward the human nature, the warmth amidst the cold numbers and distant scientific concepts. They transform this digital symphony that exists in the rarified air of Ikeda’s ongoing scientific and mathematical investigations (including his current CERN residency), mathematics at scales that are impossible to witness and challenging to conceive, and dangerous sonic levels into a moving, human, even more visceral experience. As they key in Morse code, the competing, layering sound waves and words they spell are displayed behind them. The speed with which they relay their messages feels monumental to our distance from Morse code as a means of communication. Their use of a binary language lays bare the many layers of digital mediation, the code and signal behind the projections, the digital reproduction of sound. We see the text and sound waves they create on the massive screen behind them, but we also see their hands move; we see them strike tuning forks together, we see them make quiet decisions among their microfiche and steel balls.
Their presence in front of us, their bodies moving through the space on stage, creating the sounds that we feel in our chests and throats activate those parts of our brain that correspond to our hands, our fingers, our performative bodies. We feel ourselves on stage, mirroring their action, feeling their sensations as we negotiate our way through the sonic and visual density of superposition.
The phenomenon of our brain firing neurons in the parts of our brain that perform action when we see that action being performed is often invoked in the realm of sports spectatorship or action movies. We mentally and physically feel as if we are part of the game, as if we punched through a wall. superposition invoked those same feelings for me. It overwhelmed me physically and mentally, pulling me into its auditory and visual textures while activating idle parts of my brain. Seeing Dawn of Midi recently invoked those same feelings. Watching the repetitive, sound-bending striking, hammering, and twisting of their instruments, I felt the energy build, crest, relax, expand as if I was onstage, as if I muted the piano strings, I hunched over the bass, I held the drumsticks. Walking home through the snow, the music did not leave my mind, the instruments did not leave my hands.
As I navigate frozen landscapes, I contemplate the winter ahead. I consider not just my fragile human body but the end of the human species manifest in these extreme weather swings, the knowledge that this cold too is a sign of our own undoing that cannot be undone. Despair, stasis, and winter blues are eased by knowing I am not alone. I connect with others, physically and remotely present, and I remember that I can still make changes. I can still strive for a better world by refusing to be alone, by refusing to isolate myself against the overwhelming challenges we can only confront together.
- From the Road: Present Absence - June 21, 2016
- The Realism of Our Time - April 19, 2016
- All Hands - February 16, 2016
