Process reflections - Feronia
Affective residue
recognise
“continuously make sound”
shifts in attention
together / apart
silver tunnels
room as an instrument / as holding us
navigating the space / listening / making sounds
choreography of listening / sounding / relating
shifts in attention between inner and outwards / relational exploration
Session 1 - Paisley
windows, big open space
excitement about marbles, plastic sheets, drum instrument
effort / concentration towards adopting a certain approach recognising
desire to stay with / aim for pleasurable sounds
nice to carve out individual space within shared space
strong affective response to daylight coming through the window
Session 2 - Uni
odd space stuck in time
overbearing interiors
dark wood, red curtain
pianist leaks
slight frustration / amusement
sat in a chair, playing
hidden toilets
office by the toilet
lost student
chat about silver tunnel
Session 3 - concert hall
buzz in the room
man walking through for the museum
discussions around light
“stage area”
solos - excitement, nostalgia, strange familiarity in response to acoustics
duo - attempt to create repetitive loops, tunnels
“oh well this kinda works and sounds quite nice”
stepping behind the curtain - loosening things up
moving between the grand pianos, couple taking photos outside the windows
two window panels left open
excitement of private space
-- connected through listening
Session 4 - concert hall
spontaneous improv
less chat
very late?
stressed walk through campus / park
trying things out
organ
excited by organ
not properly recording - bummer
food
listening in weird room
Session 5 - concert hall
nice stereo setup for acoustics
permission to play the organ
circles
not wanting to let go of the keys
A softer sound an earthquake (assae) is a voice and violin sonic performance created by Feronia Wennborg and me in a weeklong residency at Fylkingen in Stockholm. In our process Feronia and I built a sensibility to each other’s modes of being, always mediated by sound, our relationship to space and our own physicality. We created a safe hyper-sensitive space which allowed us to attune to pressures, pleasures and stimulation be it light, props, bodily tensions, architecture of space, closeness to each other or feel of the audience, without needing to know what created that activation but trusting and following it fully.
During the Fylkingen residency week, we immersed ourselves in the sensual minimalism of the black box space, foregrounding a deep, careful and intimate type of sonic togetherness. This particular performance functions as a slice through a collaborative process crafted over tens of hours of sonic making, part of which was taking place for months before the residency.
On documentation
I include here a annotated reflexive video made after the assae performance as well as the full performance video.
The annotated video below opens a door into an intimate and informal moment of self-reflection. In it I overlay a voice note I made on the morning immediately after the performance with snippets of video from the weeklong residency, connecting it all through handmade digital annotations. Some intuitions about the practice spill over through audio and video, being thought-through in real-time as they emerge in the body still activated with residual energies post-performance. The material communicates beyond the content of the words themselves, carrying meaning in the tone of voice, the tangents, rhythms and pauses - creative contradictions, a-ha moments or revisitations of what’s important. This offers another type of analysis of the creative practice which foregrounds my sensuous body as it feels its way through this work.
To give some insight into the longer collaborative process I also include further down an audio recording and a series of reflective notes Feronia and I made after our practice sessions in Scotland. The audio recording captures a moment of sonic bonding - this is what team building sounds like.
Process reflections - Adriana
25 Sept - Testing out solo practice - Idea of drifting - being with each other in the same space - using space to mediate our relationship - 1 Oct - pushing against external sounds/stimuli - coming together into one texture - 8 Oct - space with its history and own performance role - overwhelm from performance task - play - 15 Oct - breaking away from tasks - encountering the space - organ - 1 Nov - intentionally capturing the space - organ - each other,
25 Sept
Initially we started with the idea of drifting. It was a few months after Darmstadt where I worked with Elisabeth on that same approach.
Paisley had a lot of space. We were looking for ways to be in it, to be with how we felt and whatever attracted our attention + be with each other.
For me it was very much an extrapolation of a solo practice, asking: how can we both be doing this practice in the same space with each other. Can we zoom into our individual universes leaving the other to have their own experience? We knew that we couldn’t completely ignore each other nor were we trying to. Space worked as a catalyst - it was dry space, not much reverb, enough interest and stimulation, enough distance from each other. We were following a brief - continuously sound while allowing the attention to drift. I was curious on how we’d drift with/around each other.
1 Oct
We met in the Club Room at Uni Gardens. I could barely get in as I didn’t have the code and had to negociate with the porter that I am who I say I am etc. Composition class was going on upstairs, loads of piano music from them bleeding through. A general sense of being pissed off with the establishment on my part. Looking for the weirdest sounds that would contrast the piano from upstairs. We started apart in different parts of the room but came together at some point creating a common texture. Idea of glittery tunel came about. We talked about other spaces that could fit the bill, echoe-y spaces or tunnely spaces, e.g. Clyde tunnel.
8 Oct
Concert hall, first meeting in that space. I think the grandeur of the sound and the exposed feeling it created with the super high ceiling was in contrast with the previous two meetings. We were both trying to figure out what the concert hall could do and what it was doing to us. We set the stage as for performance with stage lights and used the front of it as a stage. We each did a solo for each other and then we moved into more intentional space. We wanted to explore the idea from the previous session of creating a texture together so we made it a ‘task’. I remember, with the lighting and concert hall setting and task fulfilling it was all a bit much and felt quite tense. We then did a bit of free-er improv that moved away from tasks - Feronia went behind the curtain and I stayed facing the curtain and we had a dialogue like that from the two different spaces. No organ.
15 Oct
Met in the concert hall again. A feeling of not wanting to set anything up or make any big choices was the general mood. We didn’t even record the first part of it, until we encountered the organ. We then played in different combinations with the organ - with Feronia playing it and me singing, with me playing it and Feronia playing violin, etc. There was a feeling of: ‘not sure if we’re supposed to be using this’. We then went to the Club room and listened to excerpts of the recordings we made in previous sessions. We decided that space was an important part so we made sure we have some mics for next time that could capture the room. We also talked about objects and transducers and having more of an installation vibe - essentially ways to move forward.
1 Nov
This was a great session in the Concert hall that has interference all over the three mics we used in the space, a real shame. We used the 414s as a Stereo pair, played the organ and played with and around each other. It was a lot less focused on tasks/methods / reasons and more focused on the fun there is to be had with sound. The space felt less imposing, maybe because the chairs weren’t laid out and we used it more like a ‘studio’ than a performance space. The concert hall became one of us somehow.
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