Interrogating Contexts
The Boiler House
[all the presentations in this panel consist of performance to a certain extent]
Daniel Blumberg (Mute Records) & Elvin Brandhi (Akademie der bildende Künste, Vienna)
‘Bakh’
Peter J Woods (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
‘Fluxus Event For Academic Conferences’
- Submit this event score in lieu of a proposal or paper to an academic conference. The performance has begun.
- The performance ends if the proposal is rejected.
- If accepted, the performance continues. Submit this score in lieu of an abstract. If the score is too long, submit as much of the score as possible.
- During the allotted time for the presentation, start by introducing yourself, stating your name, every school you have ever attended, and the name of the presentation.
- Next, read through a randomly arranged assortment of pages from the following sources:
- Another paper submitted to the same conference
- Yourlatestpublication(ifoneexists)
- A book you wish you had written
- Your CV
- The acceptance letter to the conference
- Display a power point consisting of a title page with your name and the title of the presentation along with all of the blank slides included in that particular power point template. Change slides throughout the presentation.
- You may include other digital media tools (audio, video, etc.) in the presentation that reproduce text from the pages listed above (or readings thereof).
- Near the end of the allotted presentation time, abruptly stop reading and introduce yourself to every audience member individually.
- Give each audience member a business card.
- The performance ends after you have introduced yourself to every audience member.
Yol (Independent scholar, Hull)
‘REPEATED/FRACTURED/MEANING’
For this conference I am proposing a performance which will hopefully illustrate sonically my journey from structured punk music to free(er) noise improvisation. I was in a punk band for six years and for this piece I will take one of our songs, play about ten or fifteen seconds of it and then take specific sounds and words out of it to make a new sound work exploring and reworking elements of the original using the experimental vocal and sonic techniques I use in my practice now.
Part of my intention with this action is to illustrate and question how my relationship with words, vocal sounds and musical (or non musical) sounds and meaning, and the transmission of meaning, has changed over time – for example is a chorus, repeated again and again over six years, any more, or less, meaningful as a scream or other non verbal vocal sounds, made once in an improvised performance, for either performer or audience?
Depending on when this performance is presented, after a short time for recovery, it would be interesting to discuss with the audience their reaction to it in relation to the concept/framework of punk (whatever that is).
Phame* (Si Paton & ykxa s)
‘Throwing Shade (No, Fuck you)’
Composer-researchers Si Paton and yxka s. operate under the vehicle Phame, an improvised no wave punk collective exploring dismantling imperialistic structures whilst existing both inside and outside of institutional environments. This is achieved by developing a compositional practice that is built off the improvisational techniques applied by the likes of John Zorn, Jennifer Walshe and Matana Roberts with an aim of developing a shared musical language between different idioms. The research has primarily been completed through the means of a performance practice. This paper will be a performance piece which will an explore an updated version of their co-devised piece Throwing Shade (No Fuck You), a piece that exists in a state of flux as an uncompleted organism with an indeterminate structure, instrumentation or performers. Originally performed at Birmingham Conservatoire in June 2019 for eight players, this performance will explore the work in a duo setting and addresses overarching structures such as Western hegemonic compositional practices and the university institution as a whole. The piece is written around musical gestures, performers faithfulness to the instructions in the score and both physical and instructional filters that affect how musicians can approach the act of performance.
* Simon Paton (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University) & Jessica A Schwartz (UCLA)