PERFORMING PRECARITY (2019-2024)
Running parallel to my own Ph. D. project PLAN TO UNPLAN, was the clusterproject in artistic research; Performing Precarity, where I was part of the core group. The group consisted of composers, performers, videoartists and other practitioners having personal takes to the term "precarity" in music.
ABSTRACT
The research project Performing Precarity was initiated by Jennifer Torrence (percussion and performance), Ellen Ugelvik (piano and performance) and Darla Crispin (former head of NordART/Arne Nordheim centre for artistic research at the Norwegian Academy of Music). The other members of the core group were Laurence Crane (composer), Anders Førisdal (guitar and performance), Lisa Streich (composer), Lea Ye Gyoung (video) and Io Sivertsen (video).
Performing Precarity is a project about performance that seeks to investigate what kind of practices and mindsets could emerge when traditional conceptions of beauty and perfection in classical music are relinquished in favour of precarity, fragility, risk, instability, failure, and mutual dependence between performers, composers, technologies, and audiences.
To encounter the themes, we explored existing musical works and developed new projects. We staged performance situations where it was impossible for us to take advantage of our classically trained skills to encounter challenges, forcing ourselves to let go of habits and boundaries. We played compositions where we were totally dependent on each other and unstable technology to create sound. We played pieces where the musicians were placed far apart from each other at the venue, where we could not see each other and barely hear the others. We performed on highly unstable instruments and also on instruments that we did not know from before. We performed without any instruments at all. We played on bodies of audience members laying on the floor. We created musical material through improvisation. We developed a large performative composition over the internet with fellow artists, without getting a joint impression of how the components of the composition worked in real-time in the room before the day of the premiere. Some of the compositions that we explored thematized precarious material within the composition itself, such as the relationship between humans and nature, the future of art, and different political themes.
The project group worked both individually and together, and in dialogue with other practitioners. We performed at international venues as well as giving workshops and presentations for students and colleagues at artistic research arenas and educational institutions, both in Norway and abroad. In search of finding interesting ways of sharing the project we experimented with different formats of reflection material, trying to mirror our work through text, photography, video, sound recordings and installations. By working with the themes of the project, we attempted to open up new ways of being on stage. We wanted to gain greater flexibility and a heightened presence. And we wanted the act of performance to come closer to life itself; unpredictable and precarious.
Performing Precarity was based at the Norwegian Academy of Music from 2019-2024 with kind support from the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills and the Norwegian Academy of Music. Other institutional partners in the project have been the Anton Bruckner Private University Linz, Huddersfield University and Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Artistic collaborators through the project period have been Carola Bauckholt (composer), Wojtek Blecharz (composer), Christian Blom (composer), Olga Bochikhina (composer), Hild Borchgrevink (artist, writer), Darla M. Crispin (artist, writer), Jorge Gómez Elizondo (composer), Elizabeth Hobbs (animation film maker), Simon Løffler (composer), Tomas Laukvik Nannestad (performer), Pinquins, Trond Reinholdtsen (composer), Tania Rubio (composer), Simon Steen-Andersen (composer), Vladimir Tarnopolski (composer), Theater Corpus, Andreas Ulvo (pianist), Therese B. Ulvo (composer), Bonnie Whiting (performer) and Bethany Younge (composer).
Participants in workshops and seminars have been Per Einar Binder (psychologist), Eivind Buene (composer), Karmenlara Ely (artistic director), Ivar Grydeland (researcher, performer), Annabel Guaita (researcher, performer), Maja Hannisdal (dancer), Vegard Lund (performer), Camille Norment (visual artist), Jan Martin Smørdal (composer, performer), Inga Stenøien (performer), Sergej Tchirkov (researcher, performer), Morten Qvenild (composer, performer) and students and teachers from the Norwegian Academy of Music and the Grieg Academy - Department of Music, University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design.
My output in the performing Precarity group has been the following:
CADENZA for motorised piano and assistant; videoessay by Lea Ye Gyoung - WATCH
ALFABET; Videoessay by Io A. Sivertsen - WATCH
ALFABET, draft SEE
LOVE OF THE LAUGHING MEDUSE; reflective text - READ
This reflective text explores the notion of "precarity" in solo and chamber musical pieces I composed between 2020 to 2023 (FALTER, CADENZA, OFELIA, VANILJ and ALFABET) in relation to composers, performers and listeners. To explore these relations I draw on analogies from different castings of the Medusa: the Medusa from Greek mythology; The Laugh of the Medusa by Hélène Cixous; and the sea creature medusa, also known as the jelly fish.