In 2023, I was commissioned to create a piece for the percussionist/performer Owen Weaver by nyMusikk for their 7x7x7 event at Dyrk Bryn in Oslo.
The work I created for this event, Unwriting: Part 1 (Departure), is literally and metaphorically a 'clearing of the decks', a 12-minute work in which the performer delivers himself from the obligations of his discipline by doing everything but striking the materials with which he is surrounded. Instead, he strives to absorb their sonic and tactile qualities, shaman-style, into his bodily actions and vocal sounds.
Unwriting: Part 1 (Departure) explores the percussionist's transformation from institutionalised music practitioner to—who knows what? The piece is left intentionally unresolved—an open question to be addressed by Unwriting: Part 2 (Declaration).
Although the (dead organic) materials used by Weaver in Part 1 will be broadly the same, Unwriting: Part 2 (Declaration) is going to be more operatic in scope, with the performance duration and quantities of material dramatically increased.
Having extirpated himself through a haptic, vocal and sonic re-evaluation of his relationship to the materials in Part 1, Weaver's task here will be slowly, tentatively and compassionately to discover and construct a new environment in which he can co-exist with them.
Creating a sonic environment that connects to my Vocal Immersion Practice, Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening practice, and to the internet phenomenon known as ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response), the percussionist's material in Unwriting: Part 2 is going to be intimate, sensual and detailed.
Against this backdrop (temporarily backgrounding Weaver's role), the dancer Malin Nøss Vangsnes will appear onstage at intervals during the one-hour performance. Although she does not speak, she will mime (in and intentionally out of synch) with a vividly operatic, at times overly-dramatic pre-recorded vocal part, which I will sing myself.
As thrown-together, lo-fi representations of Sekhmet, Joan of Arc, The Wife of Bath, Babylon the Great and other fictional, mythological and historical female characters, Vangsnes' disorderly (though statuesque) presence onstage will call into question Weaver’s attempt to create a coherent narrative for himself within the context of the sonic and visual materials to hand.
Unwriting: Part 2 is, indeed, going to be a declaration—but of what?
Photo, Piotr Markowski