In 2020, German composer Manos Tsangaris and I set out working on a new violin piece as a part of my artistic research project. I had met Manos briefly, but we did not know each other well. I was interested in the scenic works of music theatre that Manos created, and was curious to explore how a violin solo work could be created with this compositional approach. I had limited experience of working with staged musical works myself, and also of the production process behind them. As the pandemic complicated the possibilities for us to meet, we started developing our work online. As a point of departure, Manos suggested that we commit to a kind of ‘game’ to get to know each other better. Each day for a period of time, we would send a small piece of personal material to each other. It could be a photo, a thought, a dream, a video, a sound or a memory of some kind. To guide us in this game we would both design a set of keywords acting as ‘triggers’. The triggers could be a way of seeing the world; looking for specific triggers in our evolving lives and thoughts. Or it might be used to categorize our experiences: thinking about what trigger could capture or describe a certain material. Manos and I each spontaneously collected a set of 20-something keywords, which we shared without reading the other’s words first. We agreed that we could both use triggers freely from both sets of words. In December 2020, The Chain of Triggers began in December 2020 and remained nearly uninterrupted throughout 64 days.
Our aim with the Chain of Triggers was to establish a connection, despite the barriers created by the pandemic, that would be the foundation for the collaborative work ahead. As it turned out, the Chain of Triggers was an excellent way to get to know each other and create shared experiences that tied us together. From being two ‘strangers’ who had decided to work together, through engaging in the Chain of Triggers, we gained understanding of each other’s lives: our artistic practices, practical ways of structuring our lives, our worries, families, dreams, stories from the past, ongoing artistic projects and so on. From my viewpoint, we created mutual trust through sharing personal experiences that few others knew about. When committing to sharing something small and personal every day, our respective ups and downs became visual, almost tangible, despite the geographical distance. Our conversations at times acted as support in worries or hardships during the pandemic. After a while, the keywords became a way of viewing the world. I discovered materials or situations in my life that were connected to the keywords of the chain, thinking that I would like to send a line about it to Manos. Some days, the exchange felt more like a task, other days emails could be lengthy and personal. After the 60 days of the chain, we took a break from the intense exchange. However, it felt natural to send each other materials and reflections during time to time over the year that followed before we could meet in person. When it was finally time to work together in Cologne in March 2022, thanks to the exchange, I felt that I already knew Manos and that we had become good friends.
As I was, Manos was busy with several large-scale projects during the years following the Chain of Triggers. In Cologne, we collected some improvised materials, mainly video footage shot by Manos’ nephew Ruben Tsangaris. We had also spontaneously recorded a LP album in Cologne, called Telepathic Talents. On the album, we improvised together, recorded by Manos friend, producer Dieter Krauthausen, in his studio as a part of their duo project Unlock the Stillness. However, this material did not reflect our collaboration as a whole and I felt that I was coming in as a guest on the album rather than being a collaborating artist. As 2023 came to an end we had not yet started working on an actual framework for the violin solo piece.
Manos and I agreed that we wanted to use both elements and structure of the Chain of Triggers in the violin piece. Manos had the idea of creating a piece that would include the two of us as performers in a scenic setting with two performance stations and the audience facing one station each time, switching side halfway through. We would be playing violin and percussion but also working with lights, beamers and strings mounted in the ceiling of the space. With the strings, we would trigger different responses in the performance station of the other. It was an intriguing idea that pointed in a direction for a new kind of work in my repertoire. However, it required a large set of resources and the venue for the concert, Jakob Kirke in Oslo, complicated the hanging of elements from the ceiling. At this point, our budget and the conditions of the concert space failed to meet the extent of the expanding project. Neither my PhD budget, nor that of the festival, could cover the costs of using the space for the days required and bringing in specific technicians from Germany. My limited experience of working with staged productions and the fact that some of the budget had been used up in Cologne already made it difficult to develop the work to its full potential. The piece had scaled up too big for the programme and we did not want to create an overly reduced version just for the sake of it. As Manos was also working on a large project for the Schönberg celebration at the Wien Modern festival, later in 2024, we were also short of time. Both disappointed, we realized that we would not manage to create the work we had been hoping for and we decided to cancel the piece for the concert.
However, after just a few days, Manos came up with an idea. The material of the Chain of Triggers could be brought into the Wien Modern installation at the Wiener Konzerthaus as a standalone work for two performers. This work later became Double Portrait with Arnold (2024) for two performers with violin, percussion, voices, objects, discrete thread organ, audio files, light and projections for a divided audience changing places during the break. Manos then further suggested that we use the material of the Chain of Triggers in an unexpected way. We would make a printed material from it – a book!
I was interested in this idea as a new form for dissemination of a creative process and partnership. I did not necessarily regard the separate elements of the Chain of Triggers as intriguing on their own. A good deal of it was every-day stuff while other things bordered on too personal to comfortably be shared publicly. However, the collected materials together made sense as a map of our evolving relationship. I saw the Chain of Triggers as a method for creating connection. For me, the way that our game had established trust, connection, responsibility and friendship was striking as a well-documented experiment.
However, the idea of leaving our chain open for others to engage with raised questions. Why would others like to read a personal conversation between two artists that was initially not meant to be published? Were we being influenced by the present-day sharing culture where the personal is frequently displayed? Were some of the things I shared really something I was happy for other people to read? After some thought, I decided that it would be interesting to publish the Chain of Triggers as evidence of a method for establishing a foundation for collaborative work. Manos asked design student Paul Wontorra to assist us in production of the book. Paul would typeset the email conversation including the photographic content. The ‘rules’ of the game as well as our keywords were included in the introduction. Paul was in charge of the layout, typeset and physical product. He entered the collaboration as a third collaborator, bringing his artistic and visual aesthetic knowledge into the process.
By publishing the Chain of Triggers, a work method became one of the artistic results. Further, it added a new format in my ‘violin repertoire’. Our plan was to distribute the book to the audience during the final concert at the Ultima Festival. Toward the end of my fellowship, as I was planning for future collaborations outside of my research, I even considered starting the work with something like the Chain of Triggers. The game could be tweaked to fit the specific circumstances and collaborators. It could be used as a way of getting to know each other or as a way of generating artistic materials.
What happened to my artistic palette during the work on Chain of Triggers? The work on Chain of Triggers and the shared artistic process with Manos offered me new knowledge primarily connected to the intuitive dimension of the artistic palette. I practiced visualizing new ways of sharing our work. I developed understanding of Manos’ way of working, which, in line with our game, I experienced as a playful process of experimenting and searching. We experimented with different kinds of media to see what potentially could be developed further. Over time, I developed an understanding of how this way of working, that at first had seemed to be somehow unstructured and impulsive, was Manos’ way of researching possibilities. After the workshop in Cologne, we failed to collectively evaluate what we had created, which left me with uncertainty of the process forward. Manos did not seem worried that some materials we created never made it to actual result in terms of a piece. I, on the other hand, had problems letting go of control in the artistic process. Due to my limited experience of music theatre and because of the experimental character of the process, I did not have a clear vision of what the resultant work would be. This fact sometimes left me more passive than I wished to be. In addition, I worried about the use of the commission fee and how to finance and report for the commission fund.
Chain of Triggers offered me insights in the ways in which trust and connection was established. As a part of the intuitive dimension of the artistic palette, it developed my ability to connect to a collaborator and material. I learnt that my personal everyday experiences and reflections could serve as material for an artwork. Not only the sonic elements that I could create with my violin and software could be art, but also visual representations and reflections around experiences in my daily life were valid as artistic material. Once again in my research project, I learnt that my personal experiences were a possible starting point for collaborative work and artmaking. Chain of Triggers expanded my idea of the different kinds of artworks I could create. Manos’ free use of different media inspired me to challenge music as the only channel through which I could be an artist. In the end, no collaborative work on a violin solo work was developed between Manos and me. Double Portrait with Arnold was based on material from the Chain of Triggers but other than that, it was not a collaborative composition. Instead, it was the friendship with Manos, the insight into his practice and the developed work method of the Chain of Triggers that became my main takeaways and values from the project.
The work on Chain of Triggers is further elaborated on in the Discussion in the end of this portfolio. The work on Chain of Triggers and Double Portrait with Arnold was supported by Swedish Arts Grants Committee and Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse.
