Performances

1200–>0000 – Conduit Arts, 19 March 2016

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Pelchems

In a farewell before the impending closure of Conduit Arts, Ren Walters, Clinton Green & Michael McNab occupy the space for 12 hours. We hope to provide the physical and temporal space for improvised ceremonial actitives, explorations of the limits of performance, and other unpredictable phenomena.

Ren, Michael and I feel we have discovered a new way of interacting performatively through some rural and outback excursions over the past few months. We’ve had affecting experiences together in the bush, on salt lakes, both during the searing heat of day and in the dark of night. We are hoping 1200–>0000 will be a way to bring these experiences to a new context.

1200–>0000

Ren Walters, Clinton Green, Michael McNab

Saturday 19 March, 2016. 12pm-midnight.

Conduit Arts, 83 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy

Entry by donation. You are welcome to come and go throughout the day/night.

Facebook event

THIS Ensemble Wimmera Tour videos

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In late October/early November of 2015, THIS Ensemble toured the Wimmera region of North Western Victoria in a series of official and unofficial performances/actions.

Ren Walters has put together these videos of those times. They have the character of home movies in a way, but for me they convey something of the experience of that time, particularly our attempts to connect with the landscape, the place, and with each other.

Quiet Noise V this weekend, and ‘If I Am a Musical Thinker’ on Monday night

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Quiet Noise V

For those of you who haven’t been in previous years, it’s always a pretty special day of unamplified experimental music practice.

This year is another exciting line-up:

  • Jenny Barnes/Clinton Green/Michael McNab (voice, text, hitting, scraping)
  • Anna Fern (sound poetry)
  • Aviva Endean (mass blindfolded sound immersion, assisted by Dale Gorfinkel, Clinton Green & Michael McNab).

 

Quiet Noise V

Saturday 13 February 2016, from 2pm.

15 Neil Street, West Footscray (5 minute walk from Tottenham train station).

Free

The Quiet Noise tradition is to order a jumbo veg biriyani afterwards, those wishing to partake can do so be chucking in $5 each.

 

Aviva’s ‘mass blindfolded sound immersion’ is first cab off the rank at about 2:30pm – not to be missed, so don’t go being all fashionably late.

 

Facebook event – https://www.facebook.com/events/934086086666063/

 

Also on Monday 15 February at La Mama Courthouse Theatre is ‘If I Am A Musical Thinker’:

 

#DYSWIH presents Ben Boretz’s ‘If I am a musical thinker’ at La Mama Musica with Brigid Burke (visuals), Warren Burt (electronics), Carmen Chan (cello, percussion), Llara Goodall (tape), Clinton Green (speaker), Adam Simmons (wind instruments), and Gary Verkade (recorded voice).

 

Originally written for graduate music students at the University of Texas, Austin in 1981, Ben Boretz’s ‘If I am a musical thinker’ is a statement of the aesthetic, social and spiritual credo of the American composer and theorist himself. He proposes that artistic expression answers primal human needs for experiencing identity through ariticulation in artistic media; and further, that theoretical reflection is constructively or deconstructively crucial to expression and is itself expressive in nature. [credit: stationhill.org]

 

The text is one of the inspirations to this project ten years ago.

 

Monday 15 February, 7:30pm.

Performance at La Mama Courthouse: 349 Drummond St, Carlton

Tickets $15/10 Phone booking: 9347 6142

Facebook event – https://www.facebook.com/events/1133970129988089/

 

Hope to catch up with some of you at either or both of these events.

Do You See What I Hear – video from Tilde New Music Festival

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#DYSWIH @ Tilde New Music Festival 2016 highlights from #DYSWIH [DoYouSeeWhatIHear] on Vimeo.

Here’s some video of Carmen Chan’s Do You See What I Hear performance at Tilde New Music Festival on 23 January, 2016. Performers: Carmen Chan (cello, percussion), Brigid Burke (visuals), Llara Goodall (tapes, electronics), Clinton Green (voice), with Gary Verkade (recorded voice).

We’ll be performing a different, expanded version of this piece at La Mama Musica – Courthouse, 349 Drummond Street, Carlton, on Monday 15 February 2015, at 7:30pm. Warren Burt and Adam Simmons will be joining the line-up. Facebook event.

Discretions for Ensemble

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This new work of mine had its premiere performance at the Tilde New Music Festival on 23 January, 2016. It was a really interesting experience for me, to watch it unfold as a non-performer.

This clip is from the finale of the piece. I like this video, and I think it stands up pretty well on its own, but in many ways it was the product of the previous 55 minutes.

Discretions For Ensemble is essentially a structure for multiple, short improvisations. The improvisations are scheduled for specific times that performers are alerted to by silent alarms on their smart phones. Performers know when their own alarms will go off, but they don’t know when other performers will be alerted. The audience knows neither. I see the performers and temporality itself as my key compositional materials in this work.

The thing that became evident almost from the start of the performance was a feeling of tension amongst both performers and audience members as they awaited something to “happen”. One audience member related to me later that the tension during the first ten minutes was “almost unbearable”. My immediate reaction was to consider ways to alleviate this tension in future performances, but on further consideration I felt that this tension, and these moments when apparently nothing was happening except for this massive tension, were really interesting. Everything took on a significance; if someone moved or made an incidental sound, everyone wondered was that a “performance”? At one point a piano on stage was moved in preparation for the next performance, and everyone turned quickly to look.

I’m hoping that other opportunities will arise to perform the piece; it will be interesting to try a different approach to scheduling and location, to see if this influences outcomes.

My sincere thanks to Tilde New Music Festival for providing a forum for this work, and to the wonderful artists who brought the piece to life: Shani-Mohini Holmes, Tully Sumner, Barnaby Oliver, Chun-liang Liu, Carmen Chan, Sam McAuliffe, Melanie Walters, Rhys Butler, Jennifer Callaway, Stephen Roach and David Seedsman.

Discretions CD launch video

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Here’s some video documentation of Barnaby Oliver and my performance at our “Discretions” CD launch in July 2015. Thanks to Carmen Chan for the footage.

As documented in the video, Barnaby and I performed 30 short improvisations throughout the evening, scheduled via silent alarms on our phones, to catch both us and the audience unawares.

I’ve developed this concept further for multiple performers into Discretions For Ensemble, which will premiere this Saturday at Tilde New Music Festival. I hope you’ll join me there to see how it all comes together/falls apart.

A few copies of the Discretions are still available from Shame File Music. Each hand-numbered cover is individually drawn by Anna Dusk.