photo credit: felix nussbaumer
"overcoding", for electric guitar, tenor sax,
keyboard and live sampling
WIP#1
i'm currently writing a piece for ensemble soyuz21, investigating the different possibilities of layered or "overcoded" acoustiv spaces and the temporal and formal possibilities it generates for long forms and duration. the term "overcoding" was originally theorized by Deleuze & Guattari in their seminal work "A Thousand Plateaus" as a kind of layering of information upon certain signifiers. it has since been expanded upon in feminist and post-colonal critiques as an act of semiotic resistance - this angle, epescially its significance for queer practices of resistance, such as the overcoding (or re-appropriation) of weaponized language like "faggot" or "queer" has become a point of departure for this piece; it's my attempt of dealing with ideas of language and its connection to radical imagination, sexuality and the unconscious as a machine, all from an angle of radical queerness.
"sixty feet below, nature is absent", for ensemble and multimedia performer
"sixty feet below, nature is absent" deals with the problem of ecology in times of ecological collapse. An ensemble of 10 performers interacts with a sonically and visually responsive space that crushes any sense of outsideness or observant perspective. The title is a somewhat humorous, yet naive comment on the way we perceive ourselves or the spaces we inhabit as detached or separate from nature, spaces that often times effectively try to function as a locus purged from processes that lie outside our control.
„It is like realizing that for some time you had been conducting your business in the expanding sphere of a slow motion nuclear bomb. […] The trouble with global warming is that it’s right here. It’s not behind a glass screen. It is that glass screen, but it’s as if the glass screen starts to extrude itself toward you in a highly uncanny, scary way that violates the normal aesthetic propriety [...] in which there should be a Goldilocks distance between you and the art object, not too close, not too far away. Global warming plays a very mean trick. It comes very, very close, crashing onto our beaches and forcing us to have cabinet meetings underwater to draw attention to our plight, and yet withdrawing from our grasp in the very same gesture, so that we can only represent it by using computers with tremendous processing speed.“
- Timothy Morton, Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World in posthumanities 27 (2013)
"between regions of partial shadow and complete illumination", for piano quartet
[...]
15.
Speaking of dreams, there’s always a moment when, after you finish playing or listening to Taylor’s music at full intensity, it feels like waking up from a dream. To engage with it is to enter a reality with clear rules that are nonetheless unknowable, informed by everything you are, yet like nothing you’ve experienced before.
[...]
- Taylor Ho Binum, "Forty-Four Thoughts for Cecil Taylor" (2022)
"sixty feet below, nature is absent", for ensemble and multimedia performer
WIP#1
ensemble latenz commissioned me to write a piece for them. it will be performed in june, but currently there's not much more i can reveal. nonetheless, i want to share some of the work i'm doing here, just so you know what i'm up to - so, here's a video of me playing remote-controlled gongs next to arnold schoenberg's tennis chair.
"sixty feet below, nature is absent", for ensemble and multimedia performer
WIP#2
here's me, "composedly zapping" through different shortwave radio stations from the cold war, interspersed with some of my own "number stations"/spy broadcasts. if you listen closely, you may find that there's a quote by timothy morton in here.
"from tail to tooth", for tenor saxophone, viola, electronics and video
in the months and years following the attacks of 9/11, U.S. military and special forces conducted raids and operations to capture individuals with suspected ties to al-qaeda and allied organizations in their ongoing war on terror.
many of them became detainees in secret military prisons outside of U.S. territory, where they were tortured brutally, though very schematically, following the procedure of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques". these tactics included waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation and beatings.
one of the largest of these detention facilities is guantanamo bay, cuba. among the prisoners held there is a man called abu zubaydah. during his time in a militant islamist training camp, he was critically injured in the skull by shrepnel. sources differ as to what his medical conditions entail. what seems consistent among most reports are frequent seizures and other neurological conditions, as well as delusion, dissociation and schizophrenia.
he was captured by the U.S. in february of 2002. he has reportedly been waterboarded at least 82 times. according to certain sources, he has slipped into states of delirium during interrogations, starting to relate the plots of hollywood movies such as "godzilla" to the interrogators.
at the time of writing (october of 2021), zubaydah is still held at guantanamo bay. the U.S. sees him as a valuable source of information. this piece is concerned with the construction of information in the age of torture and counter-terrorism.
"metakörper i", for tenor saxophone and electronics
μετά, ein altgriechisches Wort, das im Deutschen als Präfix benutzt wird, um auszudrücken, dass sich etwas auf einer übergeordneten Ebene befindet. Ein musikalischer Körper – sprich ein Klangkörper, ein Instrument – ist in diesem Sinne immer solch ein übergeordnetes Objekt, das aus unzähligen verschiedenen, schwingenden Einzelteilen besteht. Ebenso ergibt sich durch das gleichzeitige Klingen von mehreren Klangkörpern eine weitere übergeordnete Ebene, ein weiterer Meta-Körper. Die „metakörper“-Stücke sind ein Versuch, durch die Kombination von Instrumenten und elektronischen Mitteln, in Echtzeit neue, übergeordnete Klangkörper entstehen zu lassen und sie zu formen, sie dabei auf eine klangliche Zerreissprobe zu stellen, und letztlich ihre innere Logik ad absurdum zu führen.