Grapefruits are growing! We are grateful and excited to release
the second issue of grapefruits. This time four authors from
different professional backgrounds wrote about six splendid
artists, focusing on their performances: AMET
turns field recordings into live podcasts for her
performances. Laurie Anderson’s
often narrative work has received a spatial dimension through
telepresence, virtual reality as well as disembodiment. Junko,
coming from the Japanese noise scene, performs loudness only
with her voice. The early performative work by Annea Lockwood included
unusual sound-makers like glass and stones as well as field
recordings from environmental sounds such as water and fire. In
her recent work she tries to make audible what cannot be heard
by the naked ear. Julia Mihály plays
with identity while using her body as a surface for projections
as well as a trigger for transforming sound in
real-time. Deriving from the Japanese punk-scene, Phew’s
performances concentrate on her voice and physicality, treating
machines as extensions of the body.
Performing the Performance
Music is a performing art, although the aspect of performance is regularly subordinated to the prior composition and the fixed recording. In relation to those, the musical performance is often seen as a presentation of a previously created, recorded, purchasable, existing work. This applies to concerts of pop music as well as classical music, which both share this mostly unquestioned understanding. As opposed to this, the performance can be the very act of creating music, in which the listeners in addition to the performers take on a role, which is more than the one of a passive consumer. According to this understanding, a performance arises from the interaction of all participants, from the encounter of musicians and audience. […]
Photo: Performance of AMET in the Yamamoto Rochaix Gallery in
London during London Art Night 2017 by Christine Eyene.
Elsa M’bala aka AMET is a Cameroonian sound artist and
pedagogue born in Yaoundé, Cameroon and currently living in
Berlin, Germany. In our interview she explains that she has
chosen the artist name AMET because it is genderless and
nationless at the same time. She calls her performance
techniques live podcasts
and mixes field recordings with self-written poems, analogue
and electronic devices. Her approach is to investigate her own
identity and the influences she gets from two continents.
[…] artist website
Performance ist die Möglichkeit, etwas Einzigartiges
mit Menschen zu teilen – ein Moment, ein Gefühl, das es so nie
wieder geben wird.
Laurie Anderson is an American performance artist, musician and
film maker. She always used to be a storyteller, whereas today
she rather experiments with music and space in virtual
reality.
[…] artist website
I'm much more interested in things now where you walk inside the music, or you walk inside the film. And you use a lot more of your own initiative
When she perfoms, Junko enters the stage, shoulders raised, wearing a hoodie with her hands in its big pockets, a short impression of shyness and a remaining strong presence. Barely arrived at the microphone, she starts screaming. Without a break. She stands still. Calm. Only her mouth is moving, performing loudness. It sounds like a frightful demolition, like something reaching into your stomach and digging, like an animal in agony. Then it stops and everything is over. She doesn’t seem to be out of breath. She says Thank you, then leaves. Almost non-expressive. Modest, too.
[…] artist website
Photo: Annea Lockwood wearing the Sound Hat, 1970 by Peter Elgar.
In her early work Annea Lockwood (*1939) was experimenting at the border of musical performance and conceptual art. Later, she collected field recordings for compositions and installations, always looking for sounds which are more alive than electronic sounds created from scratch. She was inspired by her environment, especially nature’s forces and found objects. She supported female artists, worked together with Oliveros, Knowles and Kubisch, trying to make audible what cannot be heard by the naked ear.
[…] artist website
I developed as a personal guideline that when I had an idea which I thought was unreasonable, that was exactly what I should try to realize.
Julia Mihály (*1984) is a German-Hungarian composer, singer
and performer. The German avantgarde music journal Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik regards her as one of the most
significant composer-performers of our present time. Her
performative works focus on the use of her own body as
projection surface and trigger for transforming sounds.
[…] artist website
Für mich ist der Bereich der Performance eine Schnittstelle, an der sich diese sehr unterschiedlichen musikalischen Einflüsse treffen und ergänzen können.
Photo: Phew during a performance in 2018 by Theresa Nink
Japanese musician Phew discovered after one of her
performances that she no longer wanted to carry the bulky and
heavy equipment of her analogue electronic instruments. How
could a music sound that doesn’t need all of this? What would
a concert look like in which nothing but her body takes the
stage? Phew’s album Voice Hardcore is on a line of
development that led her from her roots in punk through
various electronic, noise and rock-oriented projects as well
as musical collaborations. She travels back to the zero point
of her music, the common denominator of all her projects: her
voice.
[…] artist website
I asked myself whether I could just make music with my own body.
