notes written before dept/zimzalla event

Written on Monday, before the Dept/zimZalla event at Kraak on Tuesday. Written before since there may not time afterwards for a few days. Written at all because the background may be interesting.

When I was asked if I wanted to perform I said yes, and had an idea ready almost immediately. That idea was to slowly loop mainly quiet sounds, beginning with breaths, building through sung tones, to disjointed words.

Simultaneously four uprights would be placed around me and the amp. The uprights would be wrapped in plastic then painted outside. After close to half an hour, sounds building all the time, I would cut through the plastic - the cutting both a violation and a release of sound.

People seemed to think it was an interesting idea, and I was confident it would work.

On Sunday the morning was spent assembling the uprights, ensuring they would be stable, and creating a frame for extra stability to fix round the bottom. Just a little more rehearsal was needed to figure out roughly how the sounds would build across the performance.

While doing a few other bits and pieces, some recorded and broadcast conversations from 1967/68 between John Cage and Morton Feldman were playing. A lot of the conversations revolved around composition, and the role of listening.

On Monday morning before leaving for work I read a review in Wire of recordings from an event in Japan in 1962 where a number of composers and performers from the US and Japan performed various works. This apparently had a great impact in Japan at the time.

The original idea for my performance seemed more and more about performance, the performer, ego, and narrative. Like a gestural repetition of old ideas that other people had done better and with more point a long time ago.

Instead, while by no means original, the idea of holding a conversation with someone for half an hour felt increasingly compelling. Here the focus would no longer be on me as performer, but on the exchange of ideas, on two people rather than one, and on something unresolved and unplanned.

For a long time I vacillated between wanting to ditch the old idea, or to carry on with it, and try the new thing another time.

But when the decision was made to change to the conversation I immediately felt relieved. I felt physically less tense, lighter, almost like I could fly.

So this is what's planned for this evening: The format will be to call for a volunteer, and after a brief introduction to start with an observation that the volunteer can either respond to or ignore. The role of the observation is more as a way into conversation than a set text.

If the other person chooses not to speak, or if they quit partway through and are either replaced (or not replaced) by another volunteer, or whatever else transpires, the performance will not necessarily be a failure. It's an experiment.