ICH / 2006
"I / Me - Four Voices":
Attempt of a positioning on the basis of a text by Steffen Schmitt (Zurich),
exemplified by the production "I / Me - Four Voices", world premier
at Steirischer Herbst, Graz, 2006
The performers constantly shift between actual and virtual identity. Each
performance greatly differs from the other. The material, which consists
primarily of texts by John Birke, is being re-arranged again and again, varied
in sequence and dynamics. In addition, there is a pool from which new text
bits are chosen. The form or rather the timely order of each individual performance
is differing considerably. Form is actually the wrong term: it implies too
much fixation, while the material remains in a fluid state, boiling, brooding.
To speak of work in progress would also be inappropriate, the performances
are neither rehearsal-like approaches nor are they unfinished and striving
towards finishing. Instead, they are final results.
Each performance is a four-voiced "I", that does intertwine into
a collective "we" in time - simultaneously, but it never becomes
homogenous. It remains in its undissolved and heterogeneous polyphony. The "I" that
is speaking multiplies itself. It does so not only in the four-voice-structure
but also in the electronic alienation, the reception and the perspective.
There is the "I", names (on lists), there is the virtual community,
where "I" has innumerous identities. And still, within EMT's
tumult of voices, there exists the gesture of the beginning and the end.
I - We
Open form, improvisation:
But how is a situation resolved when individual voices don't let themselves
be
subjugated to the harmonic law of the musical community but instead
they develop a life of their own? In other words, how is it resolved when
the traces of the spontaneous outbreak cling to the event and cannot be integrated?
When, as it sometimes is the case with Bach's Fugues, the counterpoint dominates
stubbornly over the harmonic?
Equally, Schönberg's atonality pervades the opposition between voice
and harmonic texture, between the individual and the collective: The work
as the legacy of individuality and as the crises of the interaction of "I" and "we".
However, in work-oriented thinking, the assumption of a social existence
remains. It reflects the theoretical blueprint in the ideal - no matter how
morbid the ideal may be. Improvisation, on the other hand, claims a different
practice: It faces up to one moment just to disappear in the next. In this
respect, reappearance always means a different appearance, in which the point
in time matters more than the steadiness of the work.
In improvisation, this brings about a much stronger "I", one
that asserts itself in a stronger way than the "we" by being
stylistically more independent. It does not subject itself to the work-like
material but - thus comparable to atonality - constantly paces along the
problematic line between "I" and "we". Improvisation
then, if it is about social interaction of a group, constitutes itself in
a quasi-speaking dialogue. This dialogue will not necessarily be one free
of authority but one that carries out authority. It dwells upon the deficiencies
of cooperation by once in a while unrestrainedly upstaging the others, not
letting them have their word et cetera.
Roland Barthes' concept of listening in the sense of "Listen to me",
as resonance of what subconsciously is being conveyed somatically, turns
into "listen to us" during improvisation, just as a group is
being formed by the laws of musical communication. It is a group however
that does not want to be homogenous but insists on the primacy of the "I",
just to melt into the "we" for a brief moment at times. Improvised
music and theater have the advantage of being able to express heterogeneity,
the unfaltering independence of the voice through gestures of resistance,
denial, of being different.
Following Gumbrecht's thoughts, improvisation participates in a culture of
presence rather than in a culture of the subject. The improvising artist
always represents and asserts his body to the group. He exhibits his body,
which can then be enjoyed while it can hardly be interpreted functionally
as part of the work.
Out of the closeness to the culture of presence also grows improvisation's
affinity to sports, to game, to the open form. Every successful improvisation
inheres the sudden emergence of unexpected moves. It is this secretive mixture
of the practiced and the spontaneous, in which even the discrepancy of millimeters
in space and time creates a complex that refutes being written down or planned,
both in success and failure. Compared to interpretation, improvisation accentuates
the factor of the playful.
While sheet music emphasizes the ritual, improvisation moves along the lines
of the everydayness, works with formulas, and with their practical value.
Improvisation is not part of a tradition of the extrapolation of the new.
Rather, it reflects the concept of "bricolage" as Levi-Strauss
put it: "…Like 'bricolage'", the toy draws back on "debris
and parts… The toy hereby transforms old signified into signifiers
and vice versa. But in fact, it is played not only with this debris and parts
but with their very crumbliness."
In this, Agamben recognizes the "historical in its purest form… that
the act of play creates a relation between these objects and human behavior."
Through play, the technique of improvisation reaches back to the empire of
childhood, a trip back to the era of "I", a game with one's own
history and fate.