Visualisation [remix] (2024), for one performer and multi-channel video

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Visualisation [remix] (2024)

[for one performer and multi-channel video]

dejana sekulić, concept-realisation piece [six-channel video and performance]. Based on Sam Perkin’s work Visualization (2021), for strings.

The "solo performer with multi-channel video" is my concept-realisation piece, based on the piece by Sam Perkin from 2021, "Visualization", which, in the original version, was written for strings [orchestra]. However, in its final form when performed, Visualisation [remix], gains its own weight of being. Taking inspiration from Perkin's piece and combining it with the Music Biennale Zagreb 33 theme, "broken connections", in this piece — its concept, realisation, and performance — I worked through exploring multiple temporalities of "one". Superposing the time capsules of one self, from different moments, is an attempt to illustrate the continuous breaking and reconciling of connection with and within self. As we move forward, as we continuously grow into what we are supposed to become.

In January 2024, I was invited to propose a performance for Music Biennale Zagreb's MBZ33 Launch. The theme of the Biennale was "broken connections".
In his score, Perkin writes: "Visualization is a work in which the musicians elegantly throw/scatter invisible music to each other, over the listeners, and also over anyone in the vicinity. These invisible tones wash over the audience, bathing them in sound. [...] It is hoped that the work can be performed as a sort of ritualistic return to live performance, after the onslaught of Covid-19."

The two elements, the "invisible music" (or sound, as carrier of energy, frequency, vibration, thought...) and the aspect of reconnecting to and through the act of performance, in combination with the theme of "broken relationships/connections" of Music Biennale Zagreb (for which my piece was created), particularly draw me to imagining this piece as a works for one performer, extended with themself and placed in performance situation, with audience. In this re-interpretation, the searching for connection and reconnection (which Perkin instigates in his piece between orchestra members and then with audience, under then still fresh, and still ongoing, restrictions that Covid 19 imposed on the world, and on the community of the artistic world that especially relies on live performance) is a process of extrospective introspection. The search of connection and reconnection, the act of experiential moment of sound is taking place between that introvert aspect of the artists and their extrovert self, and in front and with the audience. This (version of the) piece is not romanticising any aspect of the act of performance, it dwells on superposed realities of always present elements of grace and that which is unpolished, yet testifies to humanity. And still, in the moment of performance, the multiplicity of visual and sonic repetitions manage to create and emit the elegance and the hypnotic whirlpool of resonance.

Over the period of two months, I filmed and recorded 25 interpretations of the piece. The recordings were intentionally made in moments of quite different states of being: of rest, of fatigue, of calm, of restlessness, of joy, of sadness... spread over time with days of non-recording, or recorded in consecutive days, or making a few recordings in a day. Each of these elements played a role in creating time capsules, which would then be superposed to create an expanded time-space that would then be placed in yet another, "real-time" reality, once set and performed live in the performance space, and with audience present.

Sets of recordings were made with violin strung with regular violin strings and sets of recordings were made with violin strung with octave low violin string, expanding the overall sonic and timbral range of the piece. While the instruments would be always tuned to the same pitch, the progression of deviations (detuning) caused by various environmental (as temperature and humidity of the space) and performative elements became a testament of liveliness of the instrument and the piece. And of time. As such, I kept these "imperfections" in the final edit of the piece.

The final performance material consists of a six-channel video, of which two channels are to be projected each on one large screen, and four channels are projected each on one individual 1m wide 4m tall tull scrims (or led screens) placed among the audience. The disposition of four of the projections among the audience allows for these "past-selves" to be among the audience, to become audience while being a performer, to interact with the audience through the proximity, to blur the barrier between the "stage" and the "audience".

I first got acquainted with Perkin's piece in late 2022 through Sergio Roberto Gratteri, and for the occasion of a duo performance with Victor Guaita. I created a first re-interpretation of Perkin's work, for two performers, with violin and viola and two-channel video, for the occasion of that 2023 January performance at DAS HAUS in Brussels. I remain grateful to Sergio Roberto for this introduction, [eternally grateful] to Victor Guaita for coming along the ride (one of many), and to Sam Perkin for encouraging me to pursue and create both the violin-viola and two-channel video, and also this subsequent version and interpretation of his work Visualization for string orchestra. And I am, of course, grateful to everyone at MBZ, the whole artistic, production, technical, and media team and audience.

⊶ Performance
Premiere: MBZ33 Launch (Music Biennale Zagreb), at LAUBA (Zagreb, Croatia) on May 26th, 2024

⊶ Performance material
camera/sound/video editing: dejana sekulić

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links
⊶ Music Biennale Zagreb performance announcement
⊶ Music Biennale Zagreb: New breakup sensibilities: dejana sekulić live
⊶ Coverage of the performance and Music Biennale Zagreb launch on HRT (Croatian National Television)
⊶ Festival prelaunch: Music Biennale Zagreb 33
⊶ Sam Perkin: Visualization (2021), for strings

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