Invited by CRiSAP, I and other graduates from the Sound Arts MA at London College of Communication, plus current PhD students, performed various fluxus event scores at the White Cube gallery as a part of the Christian Marclay exhibition.
A little bit about the exhibition first:
The exhibition uses sound and image to show and encourage us to make music from anything.
Marclay presents us with a video installation where he walks the streets of east London tapping, kicking and rolling bottles, glasses and cans. The video montage presents a loose composition that sonifies the alcoholic left overs of the east London night life.
An immersive animation projects onomatopoeias dancing around a room, these cartoon cut outs of POP! Bang, Shhhhhh, pooooow form a dynamic 3D score around you. As you read along in your head you can hear the performance. For example, the bobbing of water along a tideline created by 'blobs', the popping of bubbles up the screens shown by circular 'PoP's and the sheets of grey rain running in diagonal strips of 'SSSSHhhhhhhhhhh' relentlessly pouring down.
The glasses mentioned in the video installation were collected by Marclay and now adorn a performance space in the gallery. This room hosts daily performances by sounds and arts practitioners who explore these themes. The performances are recorded and cut into a vinyl in the gallery by the Vinyl Factory Press, the cover is even screen printed in the gallery too.
The invitation to perform fluxus events scores is centred around these glasses and the water theme that runs through the show.
I chose to work with George Brechts Drip Music and Bob Lens's #252.
I performed this multiple times, experimenting with glass sizes, with multiple performers, with multiple glasses per performances and of course introducing the classic metal bucket and stool to stand on.
This performance lasted just under an hour and consisted of me mainly just moving drips back and forth ... in a totally absorbed state. I would have happily performed it for longer if I hadn't ran out of water.
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Every Tuesday - Friday, 12-4 you can catch intermittent fluxus performances in this room by either CRiSAP or RCA students. The scores will all be water based, but the interpretations will vary.
