Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, London
08/09/2019
For HARD WORK 6, curated and hosted by Paul Ingram and Ed Shipsey
Other performers were poets Jeff Hilson, Tim Atkins and Camilla Nelson, as well as electronic duo Isntses
Composed by E.Waeckerlé for voices and instruments
Performed Petri Huurinainen (guitar, bow and ebow), John Eyles (saxophone), Mirie Ya (trumpet), Helen Frosi (objects), Stephan Barrett (clarinet), Emmanuelle Waeckerlé (voice)
“staying with a breath, sound, word, …, page for a while, then if there is time, beginning again (with another perhaps). “ (extract from the score)
The score
The poetic text score for voice(s) and instrument(s) proposes a lose structure and a situation for exploring through sounds subtle shift of attention and awareness of being one, of being two, of occupying that space between us while eluding to the romantic ideal and impossibility of ever achieving total unity or intimacy with another. The title is a sentence from Luce Irigaray’s book To be Two (Athlone press 2000), a feminist critique of gendered subjectivity, proposing a culture of ‘between two’ as opposed to the culture of the One.
The text score was inspired by a collaboration with photographer and performance artist Manuel Vason, a commission for Photography and Culture Volume 11, 2018 – Issue 2: The Theatre of Photography : Becoming One : a duologue in practice, a piece of experimental writing and a series of performative photographs (2017) in which “We became one in writing and in breathing, in real time and in photographic time. “
The score is available here from Edition Wandelweiser.