Performing Precarity

'Keine Ideen. Keine Neue Perspektive' by Trond Reinholdtsen premiered at ECLAT festival 2022 by Jennifer Torrence and Ellen Ugelvik. Photo: Reiner Pfisterer/ECLAT.

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.

Photos: Manuel Madsen and Lea Ye Gyoung

The project was greatly affected by the Covid pandemic. Many of the activities planned were based on close physical interaction, collaborative processes, discussions and performance, all of which were prohibited as Norway locked down on 12 March 2020. This of course added an extra level of precarity to the project, which we had not foreseen. Forcing us to rethink the project, the Covid pandemic became both a source of frustration and a challenge to our common creative processes, as the conditions for collaborative work changed from day to day during large parts of the project period. Most, if not all of the material contained in these pages bears witness to the influence of the pandemic in some way. A further challenge was posed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which put our cooperation with collaborative partners at the Moscow Conservatory on ice.

Photos: Reiner Pfisterer/ECLAT

The Performing Precarity exposition contains 14 reflective components in different formats: videoessays, scientific articles, essays, audiopapers and documentaries. Each component sheds light on topics touched upon by the project group. Our wish is that the variety of formats enriches the experience for our audience, who can jump back and forth between the components. Some reflections touch upon the same topics, compositions or performances, but from different angles. In addition to the reflective material, the exposition contains documentary material of 18 musical compositions. 

LIST OF REFLECTIVE COMPONENTS:

DISTILLED DESCRIPTIONS OF THE REFLECTIVE COMPONENTS:

Paths of Precarity: Reflections

on Fractured Passages

Article by Darla M. Crispin

Any project has a shape and trajectory that is akin to a journey, always aiming towards a destination but prone to missteps, but also propitious diversions, along the way.  Given the external circumstances, it was natural that the journey of Performing Precarity should entail more than the usual share of such adaptations, reorientations and revelations.  Accordingly, this article uses the motif of the journey to frame a series of responses to specific works within the body of outputs that the project has generated, threading its way from one to the next as though tracing on foot a whole network of interconnecting, and sometimes divergent, pathways. 

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2086770/2507561 

Soft to the Touch:

Performance, Vulnerability

and Entanglement in the 

Time of Covid

Exposition by Jennifer Torrence

In this exposition Jennifer Torrence traces modes of mutual vulnerability in contemporary music performance—from human contact via eye contact and physical touch, to the precarious negotiation of shared space—amidst understandings brought forward by the pandemic. With contributions from Ellen Ugelvik and three audience participants.

First published October 2021 in VIS Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, Issue #6: Contagion

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1040522/1040523

2-Metre Harmony:

Uncertain Chorales

by Laurence Crane

Videoessay by Lea Ye Gyoung

Sound: Cato Langnes/NOTAM

Videoartist Lea Ye Gyoung invited the project group to perform Laurence Crane's 2-Metre Harmony: Uncertain Chorales in the Ekeberg Pavilion in Oslo created by Dan Graham/BONO. In this space we could perform the piece within the Covid rules stated by the government. Performers: Anders Førisdal, Jennifer Torrence and Ellen Ugelvik.

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2086770/2507003

Creating and accepting instability;

the composition and performance

of 2-Metre Harmony: Uncertain

Chorales

Essay by Laurence Crane

Composer Laurence Crane discusses the composition and performance of his work 2-Metre Harmony: Uncertain Chorales within the context of some of the ideas, activities and circumstances of the Performing Precarity project. 

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2477484/2477483

Precarious Networks

Article by Anders Førisdal

One strand of the Performing Precarity research project focused on sharing and interdependency in avant-garde music performance practices in relation to the idea of precarity. This section of the presentation comes in two parts. The first part is the text Three Forms of Sharing: Preliminary Notes on Relational Performance Practice. This text addresses the question of precarity in terms of precarious situations and precarious projects before suggesting an analytic framework for discussing relational performance practice in music. Two works, rerendered by Simon Steen-Andersen and b by Simon Løffler, are discussed in close detail before the notion of relational performance practice is read along the lines of a Derridean violent opening to ethics. The second part is the video paper Being Together, which relates primarily to Laurence Crane’s 2-Metre Harmony: Uncertain Chorales. 

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2438178/2438177

Modes of precarity

Exposition by Ellen Ugelvik

Modes of precarity is a reflection over the attempt to change practice and mindset as a performer based on themes of the research project. Ellen Ugelvik describes performances, experiences from workshops and events that were essential for her personal transformation through the project period.

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2411885/2411886

LOVE OF THE LAUGHING MEDUSE

Essay by Lisa Streich

LOVE OF THE LAUGHING MEDUSE explores the notion of ’precarity’ in chamber music pieces Lisa Streich composed between 2020 to 2023 in relation to composers, performers and listeners. To explore these relations she 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.

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2544728/2544729

ALFABET

by Lisa Streich

Videoessay by Io A. Sivertsen

Videoartist Io Sivertsen filmed a workshop where Lisa Streich was trying out ideas and chords for ALFABET with Jennifer Torrence, percussion and Ellen Ugelvik, piano. This video shows how Io is listening with her camera and captures the atmosphere in the room and the work process.

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2086770/2507045

Cadenza from LASTER

by Lisa Streich

Videoessay by Lea Ye Gyoung

Sound/video: Manuel Madsen

In Cadenza from the piano concerto LASTER the composer and the performers reflect upon the sensations of playing together with an unstable machine rotating over the piano strings. Performers: Jennifer Torrence and Ellen Ugelvik.

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2086770/2507101

Puppets at the piano

Exposition by Ellen Ugelvik

In Puppets at the piano Ellen Ugelvik reflects upon her work creating music for a performance with puppets, actors and pianist, with a narrative from around 1895. The grand piano as visual object with its historical sounding connotations is offering challenges that are being investigated through creating new music over music from the epoch mixed with contemporary expressions to create connections to our own time.

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2251090/2251091

The composer, the performer

and the score; some thoughts

on connections between them

Essay by Laurence Crane

Laurence Crane writes about the dependence of composers on performers and the ways in which ambiguities in the composer's score can sometimes give unintended but revelatory results. He looks at the various approaches that different musicians have taken when performing Bobby J, his piece for solo electric guitar.

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2475798/2475799

Performance as Device

for Disorientation

Exposition by Jennifer Torrence

Jennifer Torrence reflects on the notion of performance as a "device for disorientation"—that is, performance as an embodied practice of rupture, getting lost, and undoing the order of things. With contributions by Simon Løffler.

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2191489/2191490

Available when published in VIS Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, Issue #11: "Play, come what may" (March 2024)

UTFLUKT -

CONVERSATIONS AND TESTS

Videodocumentation of workshops and conversations 

UTFLUKT for two performers and animation film is a composition created for Performing Precarity by Carola Bauckholt (composer), Elizabeth Hobbs (animation film maker), Jennifer Torrence (percussion) and Ellen Ugelvik (piano). The planned work process was heavily disturbed by the Covid pandemic challenging the artists to basically work online. In this documentary the group is discussing alternative endings, the need of a narrative and how to make magic. The video is edited together by Io Sivertsen.

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2086770/2508083

Exploring and performing

animalia II

by Simon Løffler

Videodocumentation of workshops,

rehearsals and performances 

animalia II was developed for Performing Precarity as part of Becoming Animal, composer Simon Løffler’s Ph.d. project in artistic research at the Norwegian Academy of Music. The documentary shows stages of the work processes from rehearsals before the premiere, reflections after the premiere and work towards revisions. Performers: Jennifer Torrence and Ellen Ugelvik. The video is edited together by Io Sivertsen.

Link: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2086770/2507149

Photos: Io A. Sivertsen

PROJECT GROUP:

ELLEN UGELVIK (EU), pianist and artistic researcher, concentrates on developing and performing new projects in cooperation with contemporary composers and artists. Ugelvik works as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe, USA and Asia. Ellen Ugelvik is employed as leader of the NordART center for Artistic Research and associate professor in contemporary music performance at the Norwegian Academy of Music, besides her work as a freelance pianist.

For more information see www.ellenugelvik.com

Photo: Erika Hebbert

JENNIFER TORRENCE (JT) is a percussionist/performer, curator, and artistic researcher based in Oslo, Norway. Originally from the United States, she has performed and taught in a variety of contexts across the entire globe. Much of her work is built upon extended collaborative processes with composers and artists from various experimental practices. In addition to solo and collaborative projects she is a member of the Norwegian trio, Pinquins. She holds a PhD in Artistic Research from Norwegian Academy of Music, where she is currently Associate Professor II of percussion. 

For more information see www.jennifertorrence.com.

Photo: Julianne Schütz

LAURENCE CRANE (LC) is a British composer. He studied with Peter Nelson and Nigel Osborne at the University of Nottingham and since 1984 has lived and worked in London. He is on the teaching staff in the composition department at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Crane writes music largely for the concert hall, though his output includes pieces initially composed for film, radio, theatre, dance and installation. Between 1985 and 2003 he concentrated almost exclusively on writing miniatures; short pieces that are invariably focussed on a single idea. Over the past two decades he has developed an interest in making longer works, and several compositions since 2003 are of more extended duration. These pieces explore the possibility of building a large-scale structure using the same type of static and reductive musical material that was examined in the miniatures.

In 2017 he was the recipient of a 3-year Paul Hamlyn Foundation 'Award for Composers’ and in 2022 he won an Ivor Novello Award for Natural World, a work for soprano and piano with electronics, composed for Juliet Fraser and Mark Knoop.

Photo: Benjamin McMahon

ANDERS FØRISDAL (AF) studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music where he finished with a Masters Degree on Aldo Clementi´s music. Besides working on solo projects, he has performed in a wide variety of ensembles such as Elision, Plus Minus, Apartment House and Modelo 62 in addition to asamisimasa. He plays multi-string guitars and microtonal guitars and composers such as Joanna Bailie, Brian Ferneyhough, Roger Redgate, Michael Finnissy, Chris Dench, Bryn Harrison, Klaus Lang and Ole Henrik Moe jr. have written works for him. His solo recording with music by avant-garde pioneer Bjørn Fongaard was released in 2015. In 2017 he finished his Ph.D. at the Norwegian Academy of Music with a thesis on radically idiomatic instrumental practice in the music of Brian Ferneyhough, Richard Barrett and Klaus K. Hübler. Førisdal is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Academy of Music, Oslo, investigating institutionalization processes in 19^th century Norwegian music education from the perspective of critical sociology.

Photo: Thor Egil Leirtrø

LISA STREICH (LS)  is a Swedish composer. She studied composition and organ in Berlin, Stockholm, Salzburg, Paris, and Cologne. 

Streich has received commissions from several prestigious institutions, including the Lucerne Festival, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Swedish Radio Choir, the Ensemble intercontemporain, the Diotima Quartet, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, and the Shizuoka Concert Hall. She has notably collaborated with Kirill Petrenko, Alan Gilbert, and Matthias Pintscher.

Among the distinctions she has received are the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, the orchestra prize from the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation, the Busoni Composition Prize from the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Fellowship, the Rome Prize from Villa Massimo, the Roche Young Commission at the Lucerne Festival, and the Ernst von Siemens Composition Prize.

She serves as a composer-in-residence with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Lucerne Festival. Her works are published by RICORDI Berlin.

Photo: Astrid Ackerman

LEA LOGIC (LYG)

Lea Ye Gyoung is practising video installation, VR, performance, and independent book publishing with various art collectives. She depicts her ideas with techniques and mediums to create a hybrid between analogue and digital technology, which links between local and international, as well as visual and sound. Her collectives and she utilize a different method of the form of cultural language to discuss and contemplate individual voices, ecologies, war, and gender.

Photo:  Claudio Cristini

IO ALEXANDRA SIVERTSEN (IAS) is a photographer and filmmaker based in Oslo. Sivertsen studied photography at The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and holds a master’s degree from the Norwegian Film School. In 2020 she attended the Canon Student Development Programme at Visa Pour l'Image and became part of FUTURES, an Europe-based photography platform. Her works have been shown at, among others, Eye Filmmuseum and Melkweg cultural venue in Amsterdam (Netherlands), The Norwegian Short Film Festival in Grimstad (Norway), Gallery CK13 in Novi Sad (Serbia). In 2022, together with collaborating artists, she won the main prize for the video work BBQ & Apocalypse shown as part of the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo. In 2023 she won the Photo Art Award 2023 from Visual Artists' Aid Fund and Preus Museums Open call 1st Prize with the work Growing pains, thoughts on the climate crisis.

Photo: Private

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