Leçons de Ténèbres
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The aim of this project is to investigate vocal ornamentations in French baroque composer Michel Lambert's (1610-1696)'Leçons de Ténèbres. It is an artistic research project where vocal performance practice is diffracted through Karen Barad's theory on agential realism and Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida's concepts of Action-Intuition and Basho.
Voic/musick/perform/ing: an intra-active spiritual matter?
(last edited: 2019)
author(s): Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The role of a singer/musician/performer calls for an ability to capture the attention of an audience. In the 17th century the general concern would have been for the performer to develop musical and performative means in order to touch both hearts and souls of the listeners. In a blog from 2016, Finnish voice-artist Heidi Fast writes about a specific case study in a hospital environment (as part of her doctoral research) where she examines and explores the possibilities of non-verbal vocality to attune embodied relationality: “my task is not to ‘give voice to the patients’, instead, I try to create favourable conditions with my voice and presence to invite the participants to an entirely new dialogue. The role of the researcher is not a distant observer, but experiential in proximity.” The relationality enacted by performer/s, researcher/s, listener/s, participants in a musical event/encounter allows for overlappings of shared elevated (or even spiritual) experiences inspiring to new ways of thinking. Such existential experiences can be challenging to describe or to discursively articulate at a later stage. At the same time these ‘spiritual’ experiences provide a provocative point of departure for artistic research. The aim of this presentation is to open up for an intra-active discussion on relationality, with reference to voicing musicking/performing and the spiritual/existential experience; artistic research and religious studies/radical theology/new materialist/non-dualistic/holistic theories; artistic research in music and its potential contribution to existential meaning-making applicable for ex in pastoral care.
The music performed in this performance-paper refers to the city of Paris in the 17th century, to the fallen city of Jerusalem as described in the biblical Lamentations, and to Gothenburg and an early 20th century water cistern. Experiencing walls and scores constructed in the past sheds new light on future structures and potential relations.
Presented as "Voicing: an intra-active spiritual matter?"
at National Network for Artistic Research in Music (Nationellt nätverk för konstnärlig forskning i musik / NFKM) 23-24 Aug 2017, Royal College of Music, Stockholm, Sweden
Lessons in the Shadow of Death
(last edited: 2017)
author(s): Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Meaning-making as vocal ornamentation.