Sonorous Bodies
Liza LIM composer
Judith WRIGHT video artist
Satsuki ODAMURA koto
Sonorous Bodies is a performance and video-installation
work which explores the potentiality of silence (absence) and the
dimensions of its touch (presence). Chinese musical aesthetics
provide a framework for examining concepts of touch and by extension,
taste, smell, sight and hearing. The principle of touch is of
vital importance in qin (zither) music where it is
considered to be of equal and interdependent significance to sound
in the appreciation of music. This emphasis on the tactile and
kinaesthetic is intended to confirm the importance of the spiritual
dimension of music beyond its physical sounding.
Traditionally, qin music is played for oneself or in the
company of a true friend (defined as the `perfect listener´).
The `sonorous bodies´ of the title refer to the Chinese
classification of musical instruments by physical material
(stone, metal, silk, bamboo, wood, skin, gourd, earth).
Each of these materials has a rich network of symbolic associations
in which their elemental nature harmonises with forces in heaven
and earth. The instrument itself is seen as a conduit for converging
lines of force which the musician/listener activates and accesses
through touching and listening. Inspired by the code of gestures
used in qin music, the artists examine a realm of almost
inaudible and invisible vibrations that surround the acts of
touching and sounding, each gesture acting as a transient doorway
into an imaginary landscape of vast resonances.
The following components form a series of articulated panels
which structure the work's physical and temporal space:
-
The projection of eight video sequences in
a darkened space. The videos capture a series of elusive `moments´
of contact, for instance, shadows falling on to stone and water,
breath articulating a flame, or the invisible taste of a paw-paw.
-
An eight-part musical score performed by koto-player
Satsuki ODAMURA. The score is written in traditional Japanese
music calligraphy which notates actions and gestures rather
than the imagined sounding result.
The work examines conjunctions between an ancient and a
modern practice of performance and the possibilities for an
intimate embrace or caress between these modes.
It gestures toward that rich and intimate zone of experience when
one's attention `to the moment´ opens up an awareness of how
vibrations arise and dissipate.
The collaboration
challenges us to explore mirror images of our respective artforms
translating concepts of void and silence, gesture and sound.
We have evolved the components of our work side by side,
focusing on the elusive realm of the resonances surrounding
our subject, rather than looking directly at the thing itself.
Our collaboration has been a search for the poetry that arises
out of the `stolen sideways glance´ or the `intensely averted gaze´.
--Liza LIM and Judith WRIGHT
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