Performance Philosophy (E-Journal)
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Midnight Reflections about our own Northern Ventriloquist\u27s Skills
Full text link“Midnight Reflections about our own Northern Ventriloquist\u27s Skills” is articulated in the form of a podcast in a conversational style scripted by longtime collaborators composer and performer. It starts by cartographing the authors’ previous collaborative works until they approach their last project ensemble, Campo Amniótico [CA] (2021), work in which the feedback or Larsen plays a paramount role, making the artwork highly unstable and elusive. As a result, performers and composer are in constant trouble, stripped of their cognitive performativity by the once enhancer technology, that in CA becomes almost a threat.
That’s when the podcast starts to interact with recorded extracts of philosophers Rosi Braidotti and Achille Mbembe, and psychologist Thirusha Naidu on issues concerning posthumanism, postcolonialism and technological escalation. By applying and discussing their theories in the field of artistic research and, more specifically, in that of contemporary music, the authors will situate CA as a post-human artwork that aims to tip the balance more towards subversion than the status quo. That is following Eve Sedwick\u27s precept, when she said twenty years ago with some disillusionment that the result of a work is usually always the same: a little subversive, a little hegemonic
Homo Electromagneticus II: Paradigms and Paradoxes: An "After the Media" Musical Performance
Full text linkHomo Electromagneticus is a musical performance realized in 2022 through a set of original instruments created with open-source and low-cost technologies. Arduino microcontrollers, sensors, brainwaves, MIDI, algorithms, and the interaction with plants’ capacitance provide digital, acoustic and mechatronic sound production forms. Cognizant of the material and energy dump that is the signature of the Anthropocene, the piece thrives on a commitment to the conscientious and responsible production of waste. Thus, in addition to original musical instruments, I also utilized old bottles, kitchen tools, electronics equipment taken from the dump, obsolete musical instruments, human gestures and brain waves as research and performance tools.
Homo Electromagneticus reacts to the exclusivity of digital sound production, choosing instead to revitalize and promote acoustic sound production. Thinking along with Zielinski (2010), the piece helps us to consider art “after the media,” meaning that it foregrounds the production of acoustic sound mediated through electromagnetic interfaces. The technological aspect of production is prevalent, but digital and electric sound production does not dominate the performance of the work as a whole.
The performance relies on the emergence of a mix compositum in which the distinction between performer and composer becomes blurred. Each performance of the piece requires the players to generate sound anew. Additionally, the very definition of musical “instrument” undergoes a transformation since the performer becomes, in a sense, a necessary instrument in the production of the piece
Instrument de/reconstruction as a Feministing Practice
No full textThis article discusses the impact of instrumental and intellectual virtuosity on British Free Improvisation (BFI) from a feminist perspective. I argue that its pursuit may have contributed to the development of this genre as a masculine stronghold in which it has been difficult for women to gain agency or visibility.
I propose a feminist practice of instrument de\/reconstruction within contemporary BFI and present three new instruments; my gliss anglais, a de/reconstruction of the cor anglais, together with the skin and bomb ‘cellos, devised by Khabat Abas. I offer insight into how our developing relationship with the materiality and possibility of these instruments frees us as improvisers from existing power structures in BFI and gives increased agency and sonic potential to us as performers.
Collaboration is vital to my practice as an instrumentalist, and I present a case study of the gliss anglais as an example of how collaboration can influence the development of new instruments. I introduce the concept of "feministing" (after Reardon-Smith 2020) free improvisation, which involves adopting a feminist practice, inclusive of male feminists, that prioritises the knowledge of women, investigates the social context of its subjects, and fosters non-hierarchical relationships
Performing with Technology
No full textThis article departs from an intermedial theatre production and an acousmatic sound performance. In these productions the use of audio and video technology was central to mediate a manifold of perspectives on societal challenges concerning migration and xenophobia. The multi-channel radiophonic composition Karlskrona/Malmö (2017), revolved around the fictional murder of a left-wing activist. The performance was produced at the same time as several notable violent right-wing hate crimes took place in Sweden. Quite a few detention centres were set on fire in different places in Sweden, in Kärrtorp, a suburb of Stockholm, alt-right activists attacked a peaceful demonstration, and in Malmö, a well-known activist was beaten down by neo-Nazis. Our other example, Arrival Cities: Malmö (2013), was inspired by the book Arrival City (2010) by the Canadian journalist Doug Saunders which described the cities that have become ports for the people who have migrated. According to Saunders, these cities are places of loneliness and misery but at the same time dynamic focal points for the transformation of most of humanity from rural to urban citizens. The performance combined theatre with chamber- and electro-acoustic music and portrayed the migrant situation in Sweden a few years before the migrant wave hit Europe in 2015 and many countries closed their borders.
Exploring Sonic Worlds: The significance of ‘instrumentality’
Full text linkThis paper develops the idea of ‘instrumentality’ to explore how the use of diverse tools or instruments involved in new music have the potential to (re)frame our engagement with the world. It will be argued that the choice of instrumental tools and how they are used in performance can not only enrich creative processes and outcomes for the artist but can also alter the audience’s relationship to the world by encouraging a conceptual engagement with one or more of its aspects. We are specifically interested in exploring this potential when interdisciplinary or intermedial approaches are taken to develop and realise new musical works. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s concepts of ‘revealing’ and ‘unconcealment’, and using contemporary work entitled Alluvial Gold as a case study, this paper interrogates the way in which new instrumental practices offer a renewed engagement with the world
Dialogical practices for imagined lines: Listening, Interference, and (non) Straight
Full text linkImagined lines are proposed here as a phenomenon found in concepts, mental imagery, and metaphors. This essay has three parts to highlight the multimodality of imagined lines: a video, an audio track, and a written component. The writing introduces practices, frames the artistic works, and describes and considers the breadth of what an imagined line could be. The audio and video works give context to the writing and communicate in their medium the experience of imagined lines that appear in other modes. The body is used here as the starting point for examining its traces and how that helps us to understand ideas like straight, interference, and listening. This essay proposes that a closer examination of imagined lines can bring unrelated topics into proximity. Simultaneously, the work suggests there are benefits when paying attention to incorporating and using imagined lines in our thinking. By bringing what is often unnoticed into our awareness, we can make direct relationships between the intangible and tangible
SETTING THE STAGE FOR THE SUN: Interrogations of performance of flicker
Full text linkFlicker is a coordinated beat which can be superimposed on the brain’s alpha rhythm, through a flickering light source, and is associated with hallucinatory or visionary states of mind. In this experimental piece, I weave ideas and performance into a poetic image and text piece proposing some hypotheses and questions surrounding the relationship of moving bodies, the sun, and eureka moments of visions and dreams of new worlds
being surface
Full text linkThis paper problematizes the ways in which performance art might be philosophy, and vice versa, that is; how philosophy might operate as embodied praxis and method. The main hypothesis adopted is based on the argument that philosophy, though predominantly thought of as a rational ideological construction, is essentially an invitation towards change and a method on how to lead one’s life (Hadot 2001, 148). This position has been stressed by philosophers Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault, who revisited ancient Greek philosophy in order to indicate how corporeal practices and techniques might operate as methodologies towards "new forms of life" (Rabinow 2000, 164). Foucault was particularly interested in the Cynics because of their visceral approach to philosophy as expressed by their "radical asceticism" (Foucault 2011, 167), that stood as an indication for a life which is radically other (Foucault 2011, 269-270). It is in that respect that one should also look at Foucault’s engagement with the gay leather scene; as a laboratory (Rabinow 2000, 151) towards a "[...] possibility for creative life" (Rabinow 2000, 163). In light of the above, this paper discusses Despina Zacharopoulou\u27s performance works in order to investigate how performance strategies related to violence might suggest a radical re-thinking and revisiting of philosophy as embodied practice and method towards a life-as-surface, that is; a life experienced in its full intensity and in pure joy
Learning Khayal: Notes on Being-with
Full text linkThis essay is a poetic reflection on how the history and practice of Khayal, an improvisatory North Indian vocal form, provides lessons on being-with an Other. This submission is a form of ficto-critique and is based on the author\u27s musical practice, revived via online lessons during the pandemic. 
Unnamed Autofictions, Dissonant Co-labouring: a preface
Full text linkThis preface to our keygroup conference contribution addresses the problem of collaboration and the autofictions that sustain co-labouring: working together in difficult conditions. It contains three registers of writing. Excerpts of autofictions reveal the slippery implications of contemporary collective labour in UK higher education. Questions punctuate the text to invite the reader into the problematics that sustain our working. Theory through narrative begins to articulate the ways that might enable the support and interest necessary for dignity to be possible at work