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"Reading Poetry" (2014 - ongoing)

[series of pieces based on morse code, using various sound/silence principles of interaction for various instruments, or a telegraph key, with and without electronics and video]

Breaks are always, and fatally, reinscribed in an old cloth that must continually, interminably be undone. - Jacques Derida, Positions (1981)

“Reading Poetry” is a series of pieces where selected poems are being read with sound. While sounding material is portraying the performer’s interpretation of the poem, the flow is being invaded by silence. Different poems can be told in different ways. For these pieces I use morse code as one of the main tools in developing the material, and this is done in different ways and in different stages of the piece — during composition and during performance. The translated durations can be those of sound or of silence or of both. Pieces are performed with the use of telegraph key, and a patch reads silences the live performance creates in the sound, and translates them back (again using morse conde) into letters. In some pieces, these silences are controlled and measured to produce a specific word/text, in others, the letters that get generated are left to chance, giving a chance for words to be generated freely.

 

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Works from the series (selection)

 

•“conversations with my future self” (2024), for solo performer with a telegraph key, live video and playback
"conversations with my future self" is part of a diptych piece ("conversations with my past-future self”).
The piece has two layers: a sonic landscape and a live cutting of this landscape. The sonic landscape is composed from superposing sonic interpretations of phrases from Ghassan Zaqtan’s poem “Fingers” (from Banners 1984), words of which have firstly gone through the treatment of translation to morse and recordings of me, my sister, and our two cousins that our grandmother made with a tape recorder reciting a poem “Venčić drugarstva” (A crown of friendship). The silences that cut through this sonic layer in performance, played with the telegraph key, are in this piece mostly calculated and controlled, and the patch reading them is projecting as the output statistics of deaths in Gaza between October 7th 2023 and May 20th 2024.

- premiere: launch of Music Biennale Zagreb (Zagreb, Croatia) on May 26th 2024
- recoding coming soon

Venčić drugarstva Pružio sam širom ruke da zagrlim ceo svet od Azije do Afrike drug do druga, divan cvet. Kad se ukrste prstići crni, žuti i beli, biće to drugarstva venčići gde boja kože ljude ne deli. U ime sreće dečijeg jata čuperka i pegica na nosu glasam da ne bude više rata da svako dete suncem zakiti kosu.

Fingers (translated by Fady Joudah) What's the ringing in the brevity of silence, delicate between destruction's instant and fire's eruption? Unlearning and wise fingers disassamble the horizon into houses and send it back to the beauty of dirt, iron and people Fingers that make the bed, fold clothes and organise photos one garden at a time so that peace may enter stone

•“Uninhabitable” (2022), for solo performer with a telegraph key, live video and playback
- premiere: premiered at Inhabiting the Uninhabitable (Brussels, Belgium) on November 18th 2022


•“Still Trapped” (2022), for solo performer with a telegraph key, live video and playback
- about: "Still Trapped" is another piece from the series, where sounding material is portraying my interpretation of the poem, while the flow is being invaded by the Silence.

The former layer is achieved by translating chosen text with morse code to rhythm patters. These patterns are in this piece extended to extremely slow speed, where it becomes difficult follow the pattern, pushing for feeling and understanding the text through this sound material of specific timbres and characters.

The other layer is Silence, the voice of the space. A telegraph key is used to cut sound during the performance, and introduce the voice of silence to the audience. The telegraph key and the body of the performer are just the tools, an instrument, which Silence uses to express themselves. The duration of the silence is translated through the morse code into text, and then projected on the screen. In some versions, the calculated silence is the one of the space itself, in others - the silence within the computer. In the former, the goal is to not have a pre-scripted response (displayed text), but that possible words are formed by chance. “Still Trapped” was performed with sounding poem entirely created from acoustic solo violin (prerecorded) using a fragment of Sappho and with calculating silence within the computer with a scripted response.

- premiere: Create LAb (Huddersfiled, UK) on March 1st 2022

"Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with hols or smaller than a postage stamp" - Anne Carson, If Not, Winter (2002)

•“Trapped” (2021), for solo performer with a telegraph key, live video and playback
- premiere: premiered at SMOG (Brussels, Belgium) on October 2nd 2021

•“if not               winter” (August, 2021), fixed audio media
- about: This piece is featured in the album "the abundant house of sappho" and can be heard here.


•“Fragment#51” (2020), for solo performer with a telegraph key, live video and playback
- about: A telegraph key is used to cut sound during the performance, and introduce the conversation with the silence. The duration of the silence is translated through the morse code into text, and then projected on the screen. In some versions, the calculated silence is the one of the space itself, in others - the silence within the computer. In the former, the goal is to not have a pre-scripted response (displayed text), but that possible words are formed by chance. “Fragment#51” was performed with sounding part entirely for acoustic solo violin (prerecorded), and with calculating silence within the computer with a scripted response.

- premiere: “Fragment#51” was performed during “is the new punk” event, transmedia performance exhibition by Noisbringers, in Gallery Annalix Forever on May 8th 2021 in Geneva (Switzerland).

 

 

•“Reading Poetry (i)” (2014), for solo performer with violin, tibetan bowls and voice
- about: The piece is based on the poem “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams. The text is translated with morse code into rhythmic patterns, which are then used as a base on which sound is played to tell the poem (with violin, tibetan bowls, voice).
- premiere: June, 5th 2014 at Miry Hall, Gent (Belgium)

 

 

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