was a 2 month residency at Bains::connective with artists, whose artistic oeuvre focuses on ’nomadic dynamics‘, and the cultural and sociological fractals that arise as a result.
The theme automatically releases a series of related references, namely concepts such as ‚migration‘, ‚origin‘ and ‚movement‘ that are closely linked to nomadism. This cluster of meanings was approached from different levels. The subject was considered on a personal, local and national, to a global level, while an artistic translation was sought at the same time. We did performances, walks, mappings, created encounters, a blog, had endless discussions and used various other means to map an area of common thought.
Some of the activities through eyes and pen of fellow nomad and artist Dario Vacirca:
a walkening: yesterday, took part in a walkening – an exercise in listening and knowing your space, under the direction of the fabulous Christina Clar. first, we found our (own, and the group’s) rhythm and pace in a golden-red forest whilst looking at the ground at our feet. for part 2, Christina had prepared individual audio tracks for us to walk with – between 5 and 10 minutes across a green field, whilst the rare yet constant sun blinked its way across water and eyes. it was a beautiful and sometimes terrific engagement with self that had a sweet performative quality to it. (Dario Vacirca)
performance with the Institute for Transacoustic Research
PART 1: RESEARCH – WAITING
An hour away from performing with Transacoustic research, currently there is this: in the wooden pool lies a man, Nikolaus, on top of projected ground, which is being image manipulated by Natasha – arrows, marks, x, a line. Petter Goldstine sits at a console contracting deep high synthetic sounds from a bass with the help of 2 speakers like a reiki bow and foot pedals. To his left is Jörg with a microphone at mouth; thousands of leads connecting to many machines, a robot musician or two and a lap top and darkly oscillating imaged sounds…. Over the pile of books, recently dominoed, is Ernst the philosopher’s installation of typewriters and cardboard record players, in front of him is the lair of Matthias, potato sound extractor, mouse controlled machines manipulator and industrial design analogue machinator. The spaces slowly becoming a performance venue for tonight’s crowd who will arrive to sounds mixed by Christina Clar, co-owner of books and participator in the trans-nomadic lecture and fellow nomad.
Aki the caretaker has just waded thru the shallow end of the pool with two large white drums; as I help him thru the door i see Luea wiping down the table.
We are almost set.
PART 2: PERFORMANCE A few hours after trans acoustic collaboration. It was art, in the making, by and for time and form. I loved it. The Austrian group were all completely in tune with what they did individually; they also had a strong understanding and respect for each other’s work and played more like continents in shift than a group of musicians; working with a flat hierarchy they manage to pull their ideas and technologies together to fine effect as well as open their work to artists from different media, such as myself. This works in a very loose workshop basis which is more about possibilities and ideas then outcome or representation. The limitations of technology and time became an issue, in that, if there was a second night, then what was the first night’s experiment can be understood for its strengths and tweaked harder for a resultant cohesive performance work. My part consisted of taking off my sandal, starting a domino of books shaped as a Y, the Y split occurring around the start of the projected floor rectangle. Then walking forward slowly over books to the split. I took out a long scroll of text that I’d taped together and walked slowly covering my body then revealing it up and down, repeating this backwards, then wrapping up the scroll. As this occurred, Christina and Ernst moved through the books and slowly read theoretical discourse on performance, acoustics, space etc in three languages as the other sound artists sampled and tweaked and turned audio loops and text bloops into sonic weirdnesses. As I finished the scrolling, I turned on 2 radios 10 metres apart and an mp3 player in my pocket connected to a transmitter. the mp3 played a Chinese voice story I cut together from bytes recorded in Macau…. This was unhearable in the din of audio all around which was quite nice as I went from radio to radio dangling a coily device and people would have thought what the hell is he doing?… not until the other voices and machines stopped though did the audience hear the story that came out of the radio as directed by my position on stage. Leaving Chinese whispers fading into the background after an assault of European discourse. The visual play by Nikolaus was brilliant – he took people through a series of dichotomies, contradictions and mappings of thought and atomic life. The piece ended in a demonstration of 6 mice playing a series of purpose built music machines from Matthias; it brought the very small audience together for a laugh at the end of a fluid night of collaboration. (Dario Vacirca)
performance plankton bar
being hear – a walkening (walking and listening)
here will not be many words
there is nothing to understand, just to walk and listen (walkening) and look
there is not much light; I have a torch, you will have one as well, I ask you to turn off yours as I turn off mine
there is only the two of us, I am your guide
at the end of the walk, I will lead you to a room; there you will sit, listen and see (gazening)
if ever you wish to leave before, just let me know and I will lead you back
here are headphones, do not put them on your head, just around your neck in order to hear the surrounding sounds as well
when we get to the room I will ask you to place them on your ears
please follow me
(Christina Clar)
with: Claudia Conduto, Petter Goldstine, Dario Vacirca, Bettina Wind, Christina Clar
guests: Alexandra Ferreira, Nataska Roublov and the Institute for Transacoustic Research.
Brussels, 2007
