70/60, 08/10/11
Atomic Centre, Winnipeg MB, Canada
Performance
October 8, 2011
 | |
| layout of 8 1/2" x 14" folded brochure - front |
 |
| layout of 8 1/2" x 14" folded brochure - back |
Excerpts from the text:
Over a period of three weeks in Vancouver preceding the Send + Receive festival, I measured the distance I could cover while running continuously for one hour. I kept notes and documentation throughout that process, including audio recordings of the observations I made verbally while running. With that information, I established the average distance in city blocks I was manageably able to cover in that time. I used that average to determine a location in Winnipeg that is a comparable distance from the venue to be the starting point for my performance tonight at Send + Receive. I am presently waiting at that determined location until the designated time for my performance to begin officially. By way of introduction, this small program, which compiles my notes and documentation and other pertinent information, including the text you are reading now, has been given out to the audience prior to the commencement of my performance. I encourage you to continue to read this program while my performance is underway, opening up a small temporal flux triangulated by the rate and relative position of your reading, the shifting tenses of my text, and the actually occurring duration of my performance.
To begin my performance I will make a call from the determined location using a mobile telephone to a telephone, either mobile or land-line, located at the venue, where a microphone on a microphone stand has been set-up on an otherwise empty stage. The output of the telephone at the venue is connected directly to the public address system at the venue, but its input is disabled so that I cannot hear the inside of the venue for the duration of my call. Once the telephone link between the venue and myself has been properly established, I will proceed to run continuously for the duration of my performance to the venue, with the venue’s stage as my final destination. Throughout my run to the venue, I will describe, to the best of my ability and with as much detail as possible, both what I am seeing and experiencing externally and what I am experiencing and thinking internally to the audience via the telephone link. The performance will conclude when I reach the venue, climb the stage, address and thank the audience, bow, and exit, all amid feedback generated between my mobile telephone, the public address system broadcasting the return from the on-site telephone, and the on-stage microphone.
To begin my performance I will make a call from the determined location using a mobile telephone to a telephone, either mobile or land-line, located at the venue, where a microphone on a microphone stand has been set-up on an otherwise empty stage. The output of the telephone at the venue is connected directly to the public address system at the venue, but its input is disabled so that I cannot hear the inside of the venue for the duration of my call. Once the telephone link between the venue and myself has been properly established, I will proceed to run continuously for the duration of my performance to the venue, with the venue’s stage as my final destination. Throughout my run to the venue, I will describe, to the best of my ability and with as much detail as possible, both what I am seeing and experiencing externally and what I am experiencing and thinking internally to the audience via the telephone link. The performance will conclude when I reach the venue, climb the stage, address and thank the audience, bow, and exit, all amid feedback generated between my mobile telephone, the public address system broadcasting the return from the on-site telephone, and the on-stage microphone.
My performance operates broadly in the tradition of concept-driven, process-based compositional practices, such as exemplified by John Cage, members of Fluxus (George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, La Monte Young), Alvin Lucier, and Steve Reich, amongst others. More directly, and outside of a specifically musical context, my performance draws from and synthesizes two performance-based conceptual works: Points, Blanks by Vito Acconci and Performer/Audience/Mirror by Dan Graham. In Points, Blanks, Acconci traversed 100 blocks across New York City to the Paula Cooper Gallery, the official site of the performance, making a call to the gallery every ten minutes from various payphones to note the time of his call and his changing location in the city. A third party at the gallery announced the calls in-between other events and performances taking place that evening. Graham’s work, performed at a number of venues, had him standing before an audience in a performance space that included a set of large mirrors that reflected both Graham and the audience. For the duration of the performance, Graham ceaselessly and minutely described everything he did and looked at as he wandered around the performance space, first facing the audience directly, then facing the mirrors to see them in reflection, which also let the audience see themselves as he described them.
Generally, by describing my route as I run, my work is both discursive and physical; it also directly engages the geography of the city and the site-specificity of the venue. More specifically, the notion of disruption, one of the guiding metaphors of the festival, is addressed in a number of ways. Most overtly, I am disrupting the still-normal, expected mode of musical performance: there is nobody – or, rather, no body – on stage. Except for its conclusion, in other words, the work, albeit vividly somatic and noisy, is acousmatic. Second, although my path is largely predetermined, my journey will still be confronted by chance and disruption. From the minor triviality of traffic to the very real possibility of cold and inclement weather, the natural environment and the streets of the city present all kinds of unexpected challenges – as if noise in the urban context. Consequently, the realization of my performance is situated somewhere between the grid-hopping notion of so-called Taxicab geometry and the radicalized urban “wandering” of a Situationist dérive. It may turn out that to effectively complete my goal, my mapped-out plan will have to be altered, even discarded. Finally and most significantly, as a non-athlete and untrained but for the three weeks preceding the performance, my own body presents its own considerable challenges and resistances. By that key, perhaps irreducible factor alone, particularly when tested against duration and distance, the possibility of disruption and failure is always abundantly available.
Generally, by describing my route as I run, my work is both discursive and physical; it also directly engages the geography of the city and the site-specificity of the venue. More specifically, the notion of disruption, one of the guiding metaphors of the festival, is addressed in a number of ways. Most overtly, I am disrupting the still-normal, expected mode of musical performance: there is nobody – or, rather, no body – on stage. Except for its conclusion, in other words, the work, albeit vividly somatic and noisy, is acousmatic. Second, although my path is largely predetermined, my journey will still be confronted by chance and disruption. From the minor triviality of traffic to the very real possibility of cold and inclement weather, the natural environment and the streets of the city present all kinds of unexpected challenges – as if noise in the urban context. Consequently, the realization of my performance is situated somewhere between the grid-hopping notion of so-called Taxicab geometry and the radicalized urban “wandering” of a Situationist dérive. It may turn out that to effectively complete my goal, my mapped-out plan will have to be altered, even discarded. Finally and most significantly, as a non-athlete and untrained but for the three weeks preceding the performance, my own body presents its own considerable challenges and resistances. By that key, perhaps irreducible factor alone, particularly when tested against duration and distance, the possibility of disruption and failure is always abundantly available.
notes on 70/60: In first framing as a 'goal' in the text, the possible conclusion of the performance where I reach the venue in the time permitted, then by achieving that 'goal', I allowed for/provided crescendo and resolution for the piece, release and catharsis for the audience - a musical convention. I followed the text as score - another musical convention. I denied my own desires: choosing not to stop for a drink, or a cigarette, choosing not to quite when I had hurt myself, choosing not to deviate from my original intended course; allowing the text(score) to dictate my movements. I denied my own humanity: choosing not to stop and help someone who may have needed assistance or medical intervention; allowing the text(score) and performance to supersede my morality.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
