Soft to the Touch: Performance, Vulnerability, and Entanglement in the Time of Covid
(2021)
author(s): Jennifer Torrence
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
What is the nature of human touch and human contact in contemporary music performance, both in general and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic? In a time when bodies must be kept at several meters distance, what comes of works which explicitly call for closeness, physical contact, and sharing? How might these works be interpreted differently in light of the COVID-19 pandemic? Percussionist and performer Jennifer Torrence reflects on the impact of the pandemic on her artistic practice and on her research as part of the project entitled Performing Precarity, which seeks to explore the inherent risks in performance when musicians and audiences are entangled in codependent structures. In light of COVID-19, this exposition attempts to unfold and trace modes of vulnerability in contemporary music performance—from human contact via eye contact and physical touch, to the precarious negotiation of shared space—and to reflect on how such encounters might breed new understandings and knowledge.
Glories to Nothingness
(last edited: 2018)
author(s): Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano, Björn Ross
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
GLORIES TO NOTHINGNESS
SORROW. MADNESS. NOTHING.
A voice. A gesture.
A beginning. An experiment. A sketch.
A becoming.
... based on the story of a singer’s performance of paradoxes and passions
in 17th century Venice.
... based on a singer’s research – performed in the 21st century – about the Art of Performing Everything and Nothing.
GLORIES TO NOTHINGNESS is an artistic research project investigating performative acts of moving between Vocalizing ≈ Articulating ≈ Mattering ≈ Trusting.
The research question: How to perform trust?
Every movement, utterance, projection and articulation is consciously exploring and honoring Nothingness as an idea and a concept much debated at the time when the first public opera productions were performed in Venice around 1640. Based on a performative research approach and new materialist theories, performance acts are methodologically diffracted through musical fragments composed by Luigi Rossi (c. 1597 – 1653), Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) and Francesco Sacrati (1605-1650); through selected poems from the volume Le Glorie della signora Anna Renzi romana (Venice, 1641); through thoughts entangled with figures such as RESISTANCE, VULNERABILITY and TRUST; through the practice of exploring force and form as every day performative acts.
Elisabeth Belgrano
vocal projections / performance
Björn Ross
visual projections / scenography