Saturday 7 June 2008

Planning, Texting, Masturbating

Feeling Comfortable (leaving the pictures out for a moment)
I went to the studio and started working again on the text. I wanted to make sure that I feel comfortable wit it. That I know what I am talking about. I did not use any photos. It was just the text. I learned big parts of the text by heart. Indeed, you can see in this fast forward, my attitude towards the speech is much more lose and open. By the end I start getting worried about my notes etc but it's because I hadn't learned anything by heart on this.
I still follow the lecturing map I had drawn three days ago. It has a nice logic I think. Once I learn how to deliver the text without breaks, I will re-introduce the photos and play with them. I think this is the best way now for going further.



DEVISING A PLAN (I am also the performer, remember?)
On Friday I was having a presentation and for me it did not go so well. I think because I was feeling very stressed (there were many technical problems and the presentation was constantly delayed) and because I had not rehearsed a lot the presentation.
After falling amazingly sad about it, I realized some things about my Solo Project (they do not necessarily apply to all works as for example to the the presentation because it's too late now and because the purpose of the presentation were different). What I need to start doing now is to really spend time in rehearsing over and over some things. Cleaning... I hate the word cleaning. It gives such connotation about dirt and bad. Anyway, I need to do that so that I acquire a trust to myself and a comfortableness. Also to really make sure I know what is going on. It is not so much about showing my ideas, but abou how i show these ideas now.
As a choreographer, I did not care so much about cleaning. I think it's the dancers' responsibility to clean and be good in what they perform. As a choreographer I need to make sure that the idea and its composition is what I want it to be. I don't know how right or wrong that is. I think it's about being able to split the work and being very very very responsible.
In any case, now I am on my own. I need to do both. I am not just a choreographer. I am also a performer.
Therefore I sat down today and tried to think what are the things I still need to do and I devised a plan until the 27th of June. I will of course have the possibility to change this plan but for the time being I will try to stick to it as much as possible.
Moreover, for every little block I will write what my specific objective is and what I need to do. Therefore I will know precisely what I have to work with. It sounds like criteria, but I will allow for other things to happen to and influence my work. Furthermore, I plan to show my work next Friday to people to receive some more feedback.
Below is my time plan. Please click on it and tell me what you think. Have I forgotten anything???





Performing the Text
In my last blog, I wrote down that I need to make the text also performative. There is a lot of visual performativity of this idea of documentation and memory but none in the sound. Furthermore, as I have mentioned, I would really like to work on this idea of delay, of live documentation or supplement to use Deleuzian terms. Once again my stimulus came from studying the work of Elena Cologni and the discussion I had with her. Only I, instead of visual documentation through video in delay, I want to do audio documentation through voice.
So, I bought a small loop machine that people usually use for their electric guitars and instead of plugging it to a guitar, I plugged it to a microphone. The machine is looping things I have already said. I can accumulate text this way.
While doing this, I have realized that although the machine is supposed to just repeat and not change anything, in fact the sound slowly slowly is changing. Ok let me give you an example. I record a phrase A that lasts 2,7 second over an already existing phrase of 2,6 seconds (which makes up of 6 other phrases of 2,3 seconds, 3 seconds, 1 second, 1,7 second, 8 second and so on). If I allow the song to play without accumulating any new voice, I can see that there are waves in each repetition and that happens because the time of the new sentence is smaller or bigger than the preexisting one. So in a sense it meets certain phrases each time to create a rythm that is slowly slowly slowly slowly changing (without being very clear when this change occurs). Too complicated? Listen to the end of the video...



A small anecdote: while rehearsing, a lady from an office below my studio, she came and asked me to turn the volume down A LOT. :) :) :) Look the last 20 secs of the video. That's the reason why I have decided to work on singin only in the evenings so that I don't disturb many people.

Masturbation
I am not happy about it though. I don't like the beginning with saying numbers because it sounds too much like a music class. But that was the way for me to learn how to use the machine properly. I am thinking I should use parts of the text. Or maybe Virginia Woolf's description. And somewhere in the middle start adding up cities/countries/seas of war.
I am not so sure. I don't really know what I can do.
Certainly I want to go to a crescento.
Why ?
Well, maybe I have to tell you something. while doing this repetitive singing, you start feeling you are masturbating. You can either mesmerise in it or go for ejaculation. Ejaculation is screaming. You can feel the pain in your voice. It's quite hard to overdube a new voice over something that is really loud. But it gives you a very strong feeling.
I also feel there is something very self-indulgent in creating this music. As if I don't care about the audience. Is that bad? I need to research on masturbation. I am sure that there must have been something written on repetition, masturbation, self-indulgence, creation. Anybody knows anything?


How do I link it?
How is the song linked to the lecture and the how to the "old" performance? I think it's quite complicated in my head. I am not very sure yet, especially since I haven't found exactly what I want the song to be about or how to be about.
For the time being, my idea is that this singing is part of the "real" "old" perfomance and it was the soundtrack of the performance. It was built according to the idea that "photos echo photos, echo photos, echo photos" and that we only remember through photos.
In the "old" performance, you could only listen to the end product of the music (the most blurred of all). Without being able to clearly listen to the different stages. In the lecture, I will demonstrate the procedure.
How about that????
What do you think?
and maybe i first sing, and then explain ????
or first explain and then sing???
what do you think ???
I also have a wild idea, that I arrive at the end of the lecture (I don't announce that to the audience) with this singing and when it's the pick of the song, the most blurred part and noisy one, I start really masturbating on the photos that are on the floor. Showing the self-indulgence we have when we look at pictures instead of reality (very Lacanian I know) and at the same time my insolence to the photos. I want to shock exactly like the photos do. But I am not sure, I need to study about masturbation in front of the audience. Any help ? Martin or Tony or Mariella? or anyone out there?

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