Ritual, Repetition and Sustainability in Art

29/11/2022

These are some thoughts that I presented at a talk at Luca Art School in Gent/Belgium in November 2022. What you can read here is more a script than a well structured text or a lecture. It is a collection of considerations and examples of my artistic works that include aspects of rituality and sustainability. Most of what I have done as an artist during the last decade has a ritual flavour although I don´t intend always to create rituals. Sustainability is part of my work because I use to include the dimension of time into the conditions of the situations I create. In conceptual works like “to Eternal Peace”, durational projects like “Grundgesetzwanderung/Constition walk” or “7000 (dead) trees” and in my durational voice performances. 

Ritual – Nature - Breathing

Rituals as a practice that is very much related to repetition maybe emerged by watching and experiencing nature. Nature is mainly structured by repetition, the movement of sun and moon, seasons, breathing, night and day. In other words: Doing a ritual has the potential to bring us closer to nature again.

Voice is very close to the very fundamental repetitive action or movement: Breathing. I use this form of repetition in some of my voice performances.

Rituals are a way to connect with nature through a very human form of activity. Rituals show something that we have to look for on a not only artistic level. We need to re-create a mind set that includes “nature” and culture and humankind into one framework. We have to learn again that these aspects are not divided by nature but by a sort of thinking that dominates western culture since enlightenment and capitalism. 

Normal and ritual action

What is the difference between a normal action and a ritual action? (Very often ritual practice consists of simple actions.) But Ritual has a special form of awareness.  The action itself is the important thing and not so much the result of the action. 

Tee-Ceremony: It is not about: Oh I would like to drink a cup of tea! But about a whole process of actions done in a very clear and conscious way. This is very close to Performance Art. Performances have almost never the purpose to create a result that will stay after the performance is over – like painting a picture. In this sense Performance Art is not sustainable. 

Art and time

Sustainability is a question of time or how to work with time and in time. My projects are very often long durational performances or activities. And in these durational structures again repetition plays a central role. Example: GG-Wanderung, 7000 (tote) Bäume, Totenklage

Repetition comes into Rituals on two levels. Very often in a Ritual certain action are done more than once (Mantra singing, Rosenkranz/Rosary, certain gestures) and on the other hand Rituals are mainly designed to be repeated on certain occasions or certain days during the year. 

In my art work I use both forms of Ritual very often. My performances have often aspects of repetition (voice performances like “following” but also 7000 dead trees) and I/we have created some performances that can be repeated as long as we want to do it or it makes some sense. But repetition in performance art is not like repeating a song or a theatre play. You only can take the material you work with and adapt them to the situation that you find at the spot where you will perform. But still it is a repetition – only that we are aware of the impossibility to really repeat something. 

(big difference to cultural based rituals: there is no chance to decide if people in the community want to do them or not. They are part of their life form. Art as we understand it needs the chance of individual choices.)

My impression is that the renaissance of Rituals in Art and Theatre put the focus on two aspects: the healing power of rituals and the role of rituals for initiations and in moments of transition from one state of being into another one. There is nothing wrong with these focuses but for me as an artist, rituals are more a way to connect with the world - whatever that means – and create a reciprocal relationship, i.e. a relationship in which both/all sides are influenced by each other. 

Ritual, Repetition and Sustainability have in common a connection to time. They all contain a linear and a circular aspect of time running.

Rituals happen in time and need time that moves forward and at the same time (!) a ritual calls for repetition, which is a circular idea.

Repetition has not only the circular aspect of time in it but also something else. Through repeating a certain action (a sound, a melody, a text, a movement, a gesture etc.) the quality of this action will change. And the relation between myself and the repeated action changes through repetition.

7000 (dead) trees

Sustainability is a word that appeared the first time in a book about forestry (late 18^th century). 

The project has a ritualistic flavour, because the main work is not the thousands of photos but the actions that create an awareness for the dead trees that I and my supporter see. Find it, make a photo, find a small stone in the landscape where the trees was standing, put the tree on a list, write down where the tree was found and the photo was taken, making prints of all the photos, put them in spaces on the walls to create an installation where other people repeat a part of this ritual. They see all the trees on the wall and if they want they can focus on single examples – sometimes for aesthetic reasons sometimes for others. All these activities are important and have a ritual aspect. It is a practice to exercise the way you look at the world. 

Musil – Wanderlesung

One year 2013 with 22 readings all done in Köln in different spaces continuing to read Musils novel “man without qualities”. Repeating the same setting of different spaces and read from the same book chronologically for one year. 

Grundgesetzwanderung/constitution walk

During two years 2017-19 on 63 days I walked from the very west of Germany to the very east and recited the first part of the German constitution that contains the human rights part. 

Repetition: Always the same text always at another place; 

Ritual: recitings in public or outside on places that seemed (to me) good for an action like this. 

Sustainability: I am not sure but there was the idea to set a line or a trace with these strong thoughts through Germany and see if there is some effect (although I will never find out if or if not…); 

Sustainability in myself! Yes: One of the leading questions for this durational performance was how my relationship to this text and the content of the articles would develop during the time of the performance walk. It clearly had a sustainable effect. I will never live without this text, even if I don´t know all the words by heart for the rest of my life, the memory is so strong that I very often refer to it in all sorts of circumstances. 

The GG-Performance was a very clearly structured ritual (some moments of chance though) with a clear order of actions and the repetition of one structure for five times. 

The GG-Box is based on the idea of sustainability. I want to make sure (in an artistic and not scientific way!) that this constitution, surely the best Germany had so far, will survive and be remembered in times to come. 

Dialogue of memories

A voice performance that I did in a cave in the Swabian Alb in 2021 (part of a performance-film project that was initiated by VestAndPage). Definitely a ritual. Already the date that I have chosen had a certain importance. The night to the 21^st of June, summer solstice. A moment in the year that was known by all groups of human beings since the beginning of homo sapiens (and maybe even earlier). These caves are a very important places for the history of humankind starting 40 000 years ago. Some of the first artistic artefacts of humans were found there, also some of the oldest musical instruments (flutes made of mammoth ivory).

I sat in this cave from sunset to sunrise and every hour…

Time:

Night to the 21st of June, summer solstice, from sunset to sunrise.

Time Measuring during the performance: 

With a knot cord, which I took from the artist Terry Fox and which has 552 knots, according to the steps/stones of the labyrinth of Chartres. The inclusion of the labyrinth can be understood as a symbolic intermediate step on the path to the cave as the original place of life and (cult). 

On a personal level, it is a step into memory, my earlier work with cord and voice on different occasions.

From sunset to sunrise (summer solstice, i.e. the shortest night of the year) I sat on a chair in the back of the cave and made a vocal sound with each breath. Each period had 552 sounds, one breath per knot of the cord. Then a short break to stretch my legs, have a drink, etc. 

The performative situation in the cave was co-created by Agnes Pollner, who spent the night sitting at the entrance to the cave and meditating on the place. Like many other things, this turned out to be not as easy as we had assumed. Her task was greater than suspected. She became, in a sense, a guardian who watched over the entrance to the cave.

Situation 552  

An early voice performance with strong repetitive and ritual aspects. 

A cord with 552 knots according to the number of steps at the labyrinth of the Cathedral of Chartres.

An Homage to Terry Fox who invented this cord as a score for some of his sound sculptures where he used very long piano wires.

Natur - Landschaft - Feld

27/11/2022

Vom IRWEGK und der Kunst aus betrachtet

(These: Das Konzept der Landschaft beinhaltet den Aufruf zum künstlerischen Leben)

Hier möchte ich über die genannten Begriffe verschiedene Spielarten des Verhältnisses von Mensch und Welt betrachten und darüber nachdenken, welches dieser Verhältnisse für die gefährdete Welt, in der wir leben, Hoffnung auf positive Veränderung macht. 

Hintergrund dieser Recherche ist IRWEGK.

Dieses Thema der Kontextualisierung beschäftigt mich auch in meinen stimmf(i)eld-recordings, die ich deswegen mit diesem Text kombiniere. Die recordings entstehen in einer klanglichen Situation, die ich irgendwo auffinde. D.h. ich kreiere die Situation nicht, sondern stelle mich in sie hinein. Zu der Klangsituation füge ich eigene stimmliche Interventionen zu. Dabei versuche ich, die Stimme nicht in den Vordergrund zu bringen, sondern sie als Teil des Klangraumes mitklingen zu lassen. 

Es gibt wie immer bei mir und meinen media arte povera Aktionen im Nachhinein keine technische Veränderung. Nur Anfang und Ende des Tracks werden manchmal leicht bearbeitet (Fade in/out) 

Im Rahmen der stimmfeld-Soiréen habe ich im November 2022 einen Vortrag zu diesem Thema gehalten. Die Aufnahmen dazu kann man sich hier anhören:

stimmfeld-Soiree

Die Natur

Natur ist von den Begriffen aus der Überschrift der umfassendste. Natur scheint alles zu sein, zumindest wenn man sie kosmologisch versteht. Zugleich ist er der vieldeutigste Begriff. Er kann viel Verschiedenes meinen. 

Der moderne Naturbegriff, den wir alle mit uns tragen und nicht mehr loswerden, setzt die Natur in den Gegensatz zur Kultur. (Die andere Gegenüberstellung, die mit der ersten verwandt ist, sieht den Menschen der Natur gegenüber. Dazu gleich mehr!) 

Dieser Gegensatz ist für das moderne Europa fundamental. Davon sind wir geprägt und es gibt nur ganz selten mal einen Hinweis aus anderen Denkweisen, dass das auch anders gedacht werden kann. Dann stehen sich Kultur und Natur nicht gegenüber, sondern sind ineinander verflochten. 

Ein Ergebnis dieser Aufteilung, das sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten so deutlich zeigt, besteht in der Kulturferne der Naturschützer. Es gibt viele Leute und Institutionen, die die Natur bewahren und retten wollen, bei denen die Kultur eher als ein Gegner betrachtet wird, denn als Mitstreiter. (Auch deshalb haben die Grünen in ihrer mittlerweile langen Existenzzeit nie ein überzeugendes kulturpolitisches Konzept vorgelegt.) Beispiel: Letzte Generation? 

Das ändert sich erst allmählich. Die Natur gibt es nicht! ist ein Satz, der für diese neue Tendenz steht. Es gibt sie nicht in dem Sinne, wie sie als Gegensatz zur Kultur inszeniert wird. Die Kultur gibt es dann übrigens auch nicht. Jetzt, wo uns die Welt, wie wir sie kannten, um die Ohren fliegt, wird deutlich, dass in dieser Trennung einer der Gründe zu finden ist für die Misere. Wir müssen wieder lernen, Natur und Kultur als ein gemeinsames Feld (!) zu verstehen. Dann wird es auch nicht mehr möglich sein, z.B. die Ökonomie als eine Wissenschaft (?) zu betreiben, in der die Kollateralschäden, die in der Natur passieren, einfach ignoriert und nicht mit in die eigenen Berechnungen integriert werden. Nur so war die Weltzerstörung (ökologisch und sozial) durch den Kapitalismus überhaupt möglich. 

Der Begriff einer Natur, der den Menschen und der von ihnen geschaffenen Kulturwelt gegenüber steht, war eine der Voraussetzungen für den Siegeszug des Kapitalismus. 

Ein neuer Geist, der nicht mehr dem Kapitalismus gehorcht, muss gefunden und eingeübt werden. Das ist eine Aufgabe, die sich IRWEGK stellt. Die Arbeitsthese lautet: Diese Geisteshaltung ist im Feld der Kunst zu finden, wo es eine andere Art gibt, das Verhältnis zwischen Welt und Menschen zu verstehen, als das in der Moderne üblich war. Nicht Trennung von Subjekt und Objekt, nicht die Welt nur als wissenschaftlichen Gegenstand sehen oder die Natur als auszubeutende Ressource, Mülleimer oder Erholungsgebiet. 

Die Landschaft

Bei meinen Überlegungen zum Begriff der Landschaft beziehe ich mich auf die Schriften des Schriftstellers Volker Demuth: den Artikel „Landschaftsentfaltung“ der vor einiger Zeit in der Lettre International erschienen ist und das Buch von Demuth mit dem Titel „Unruhige Landschaften“, Untertitel „Ästhetik und Ökologie“ (Würzburg 2022).  Schon der Untertitel weist darauf hin, dass es bei Demuth einiges zu erfahren gibt über ein poetisch-künstlerisches Weltverständnis, dem wir bei IRWEGK auf der Spur sind. 

Auch Landschaft ist kein unproblematischer Begriff, aber er hat das Potenzial, ein Denken zu fördern, das den respektvollen Umgang mit der Welt einübt. Der Begriff der Landschaft ist in der Epoche des Kapitalismus nicht ungeschoren davon gekommen und längst kapitalistisch eingetütet worden: „Wir haben uns, so scheint es, in der Mehrzahl daran gewöhnt, Landschaft in zwei Bereiche aufzutrennen: einerseits in einen Erlebnisraum, worin Landschaften als sentimentale Auffanglager und Wellnessbereiche für Zivilisationsmüde bereitgehalten werden und Idyllen ästhetische Relaxantien für den gestressten Psychohaushalt abgeben; zum anderen in einen Benutzungsraum, den wir ausbeuten und aus dem wir soviel Kapital schlagen wie möglich. In bizarrer Parallelität liegen Landschaften mit agrarindustrieller Intensivnutzung und landschaftliche Tourismuskulissen mit Erholungswert unmittelbar nebeneinander.“ (Demuth, S. 56)

Die Landschaft ist als Begriff hilfreicher als die Natur, um die Bezogenheit des Menschen zu seinem Lebensraum zu verstehen. Landschaft ist ein „natural-sozialer Raum“, d.h. die Landschaft ist nicht einfach Natur, sondern ein Zusammenhang, der aus natürlichen, sozialen und kulturellen Aspekten zusammengesetzt ist und irgendwie als eine Einheit wahrgenommen wird. 

Die Natur dagegen ist das „Andere“, etwas, das ganz unabhängig von Kultur oder dem Menschen zu existieren scheint. (Auch wenn Natur in diesem Sinne zur Zeit nicht mehr existiert, weil die ganze Erde von menschlichen Eingriffen betroffen ist.)

Landschaft ist ein System von Beziehungen, in denen ich situiert bin: sinnlich, emotional, kognitiv – ästhetisch, spirituell, Bedeutung gebend, Bezug nehmend.

Ich will ein paar Facetten des Landschaftsbegriffs aufzählen, aus denen eine umfassendere Idee von Landschaft gebildet werden kann, die den IRWEGK fördert.

Landschaft als Lebenseinheit

Im Mittelalter „band Landschaft die Physis einer Gegend und jene Menschen, die in ihr als Gemeinschaft wirkten und ihr Dasein zubrachten, zu einer untrennbaren Lebenseinheit zusammen“. (Demuth, S. 53) Da wollen wir ja nicht wieder hin, aber daraus lässt sich für unsere Situation etwas lernen. Wenn wir uns als Menschen so verstehen, dass wir in Landschaften mit einbezogen sind, erkennen wir vielleicht schneller und besser die ethischen Konsequenzen, die mit unserem Dasein in der Welt einher gehen. Es gibt ein Ethos der Bezogenheit. Ich muss mich zu den Bezügen, in denen ich lebe, verhalten. Der Begriff der Landschaft kann helfen, genau dafür wieder ein Bewusstsein zu schaffen. 

Ein weiterer wichtiger Punkt des alten Landschaftsbegriffes war seine metaphysische Dimension. In allen Kulturen vor der Moderne waren Geister, Götter oder Gott in der Landschaft präsent. D.h. das Heilige war immer Teil der Landschaft. Das ist für uns heute fast unvorstellbar geworden. Die Frage ist, wie können wir etwas von dieser Heiligkeitsidee wiederfinden, ohne auf Gott oder die Götter setzen zu müssen? Auch das versuchen wir bei IRWEGK zu üben. 

Dafür ist wichtig zu erkennen, dass sich die ursprüngliche Bedeutsamkeit und "Heiligkeit" der Landschaften mit allem, was in ihnen auffindbar ist, durch die Ästhetisierung im Zuge der neuzeitlichen Entwicklung Europas in die Sphäre der Kunst zurückgezogen hat. Da überwintert sie bis heute und dort suchen wir sie auf, um sie mit unseren bescheidenen Mitteln wieder ins Leben zu integrieren. Um die ästhetische Landschaft geht es jetzt:

Landschaft als ästhetische Einheit. 

Später, in Renaissance und Neuzeit wird die Landschaft zu einer ästhetischen Einheit. Ich schaue als Mensch plötzlich auf eine Landschaft (statt Teil von ihr zu sein), oder gar auf ein Landschaftsgemälde. Dieses Schauen löst in mir eine innere Reaktion aus. D.h. es gibt eine Korrespondenz von Innen und Außen. Über eine Landschaft reden heißt plötzlich über sich selbst zu sprechen. Die Korrespondenz von inneren und äußeren Landschaften wird ein Leitthema der Romantik.

Auch das ist eine Bezogenheit, die für unsere Praxis der Einübung eines künstlerischen Weltbezugs wichtig sein kann. Am besten in der Kombination mit der früheren Idee von Landschaft, die ich oben skizziert habe. 

Für heute können wir versuchen, den Begriff der Landschaft mit dem des Ortes zu verbinden. „Zur Verfassung des Menschen gehört, dass er Teil des Raumes ist, nicht eines abstrakten – logischen, mathematischen - Raums, sondern von Orten und Landschaften.“ (Demuth, S. 55) 

Die Orte, an denen ich lebe oder zu denen ich mich ab und zu begebe stellen Landschaften dar oder sind die Zentren von um sie herum gelegten Landschaften. Es sind Bezugsysteme, die mitbestimmen, wie ich lebe. Da gibt es Abhängigkeiten, Möglichkeiten, Bedingungen, Chancen, Freiheiten und Notwendigkeiten usw. die mit der Landschaft verbunden sind. 

(Landschaft wird also zu einem metaphorischen Begriff und zugleich bleibt er ein konkreter Begriff.) Der Begriff des Orts hilft zu einer Orientierung in dem System der Landschaften. 

Das Feld

Der Begriff des Feldes liegt für jemanden, der wie ich mit dem label stimmfeld und hörfeld agiert, auf der Hand. Dabei sehe ich Feld nicht als Alternative zu Landschaft, sondern als einen Begriff, der es erlaubt, ein paar Aspekte genauer zu beleuchten. Zwei Assoziationen kommen mit bei dem Nachdenken über den Feldbegriff. Zum einen denke ich an das Feld der Landwirtschaft, also eine Parzelle des Landes – in der Landschaft – die so zugerichtet wird, dass dort eine bestimmte Pflanze und Frucht gedeiht. Die Idee des Feldes ist so alt wie die Erfindung des systematischen Anbaus von Getreide vor ca. 12000 Jahren. Die Art, wie die Felder zugerichtet werden, hat sich allerdings sehr gewandelt. 

Mehr noch als die Landschaft ist das Feld in diesem Sinne der Intervention des Menschen ausgesetzt. So betrachtet besteht die Welt mittlerweile fast durchgehend aus einer Aneinanderreihung von Feldern, die sich mehr oder weniger stark durch menschlichen Einfluss verändert haben. Und im kapitalistischen Begriff von „Natur“ wird die Welt zu einem Feld, das dazu da ist, so viel wie möglich aus ihm rauszupressen um den Profit zu maximieren. 

Jetzt ist die Frage: Wie können wir die Bedingungen für diese Felder so ändern, dass sie wieder Landschaften entstehen lassen, in denen der Mensch nur ein Faktor ist, und nicht mehr der allein entscheidende?

Die zweite Assoziation ist die des Kraftfeldes, ein Begriff, der erst 1830 von Michael Faraday eingeführt wurde. Ich werde jetzt nicht in die Physik eintauchen, sondern definiere ganz unwissenschaftlich ein Kraftfeld als eine Region, in der eine energetische Situation herrscht, die auf sich verweist, also irgendwie mit sich zu tun hat. Um diese energetische Situation zu installieren, bedarf es bestimmter Bedingungen, die durch die „Körper“ die das Kraftfeld erzeugen, gegeben sind. (Feldspule z.B.)

Das ist dem sehr nahe, was in einer Stimmperformance abläuft, so wie ich sie verstehe. Ich schaffe und finde Bedingungen für eine Situation, die bestimmte Aktionen befördert und erlaubt und andere schwieriger macht. 

Dafür sind die stimmfield-recordings gute Beispiele. Da finde ich eine Situation vor, die klanglich irgendwie vorgeformt ist und mir dadurch Bedingungen vorgibt, die ich für meine Intervention mit ins Spiel bringen muss. Was dann entsteht, ist vielleicht mehr als ein Klangfeld: eine Klanglandschaft. 

Das Bild des Kraftfeldes erlaubt außerdem, die persönliche Landkarte, auf der die Orte und Landschaften abgebildet sind, die für mich aus welchen Gründen auch immer Bedeutsamkeit besitzen, mit einem passenden Blick zu zeichnen. Die Orte auf der Karte werden zu Körpern, von denen die energetischen Felder ausstrahlen, auf die dazugehörige Landschaft und noch wichtiger auf mich, sofern ich mich den Orten nähere. Das kann real als Reise geschehen, aber auch ideal als Erinnerung und Imagination. Orte, die mir etwas bedeuten, wirken auch dann auf mich, wenn ich mich nur geistig zu ihnen bewege. Die Verwendung der Kraftfeldmetapher in dieser Art hilft, eine Form von Bedeutsamkeit in die Geographie des eigenen Lebens zu bringen, die dem Weltbild einer mittelalterlichen europäischen Landschaft insofern entspricht, als dass der Maßstab der inneren oder äußeren Karte nicht die exakte Distanz zwischen Ort A und B wiedergibt, sondern die in einem Beziehungsgeflecht stehenden bedeutsamen Orte hervorhebt. Anders als im Mittelalter spielt hier nicht mehr die religiöse Prägung die dominante Rolle, sondern ich bin in der Lage, mit der Idee der Kraftfelder eine individuelle Karte zu zeichnen, die von anderen gelesen werden kann. 

(Demuth, beim Wandern auf einem byzantinischen Weg auf der griech. Insel Paros, S. 120: „Für ein paar Augenblicke erlaube ich mir die Illusion, im Magnetfeld Konstantinopels zu schreiten, ausgerichtet wie ein winziger Metallspahn vom unwiderstehlichen und verworfenen Glanz eines gottesfürchtigen Imperiums.“)

Jetzt will ich die Frage nach dem Verhältnis des Menschen zu Natur, Landschaft, Feld noch einmal durchspielen, in dem ich die Haltungen oder Positionen aufzähle, die in den verschiedenen Örtlichkeiten vom Menschen eingenommen werden können. Alle diese Positionierungen bringen Teilaspekte zum Vorschein:

1.    Ich bin der Welt gegenüber positioniert. Dort die Natur, hier bin ich. Der etwas abgedroschene Spruch: Die Natur braucht uns nicht, wir aber brauchen die Natur, gibt diese Haltung ganz gut wieder. Dahinter steckt die Vorstellung, es gäbe einerseits die Natur und andererseits die Menschen. Das ist ja auch nicht ganz falsch. Die Menschen haben eine besondere Rolle, die sich beispielsweise darin ausdrückt, dass es eine kulturelle Evolution gibt, die ganz anders und viel schneller vonstatten geht als die natürliche Evolution. Diese kulturelle Evolution gibt es nur beim Menschen. Daraus hat sich dann auch die Unterscheidung gebildet zwischen Natur einerseits und Kultur andererseits. Natur als das, was unabhängig von den Menschen existiert und Kultur als die Gesamtheit der menschengemachten Dinge und Strukturen. Übersehen wurde nur lange, dass Kultur in die natürlichen Zusammenhänge verwoben ist, so wie der Mensch. 

2.    Der Mensch positioniert in einer Landschaft. Das große Bild ist die Landschaft mit ihren reziproken Bezügen, den materiellen, ästhetischen und energetischen Bedingungen, die die Landschaft sozusagen zusammenhalten. Und darin ist der Mensch irgendwo positioniert, ohne besonders herausgehoben zu sein. In diesem Bild des Verhältnisses von Mensch und Welt kommen ganz andere Abhängigkeiten und Bedingungen zur Geltung als bei dem Begriff der Natur. Der Mensch ist Teil der Landschaft und wird von ihr geformt, so wie die Landschaft vom Menschen mitgestaltet wird oder zumindest werden kann. Wir leben in einer Zeit in der es weder eine von Menschen unberührte Natur noch eine Landschaft ohne menschlichen Beitrag gibt. Aber der Begriff der Landschaft macht deutlicher, dass wir bei dieser Gestaltung uns selbst und unsere direkten Lebensbedingungen verändern. (Gaia als Landschaft?) Die Landschaft erlaubt viel mehr als der Begriff der Natur, ästhetisch oder besser poetisch verstanden zu werden. Landschaft hat immer Form, Natur bleibt ein abstraktes Konzept. 

3.    Die Welt entfaltet sich vom Nullpunkt meiner körperlichen Position aus. Diese phänomenologische Position oder Haltung bringt etwas ins Spiel, was bei den anderen beiden Begriffen nicht mitbedacht ist. Meine Einbettung in der Welt als wahrnehmendes und handelndes Wesen passiert vom Nullpunkt meines Körpers aus. Die Welt entfaltet sich um mich herum aus dem Zentrum meiner realen Position in Raum und Zeit. Ich erfahre die Welt immer von mir aus betrachtet. Natur und Landschaft sind Konzepte, die beide ein Verhältnis von Mensch und Welt konstruieren, das bestimmte Möglichkeiten der Interpretation dieses Verhältnisses erlaubt. Wenn ich von der Art und Weise ausgehe, wie ich – als ein Beispiel des Menschen – mich in der Welt auffinde, dann passt das Bild eines Feldes, genauer eines Kraftfelds mit mir als Zentrum gut. In der Philosophie hat die Phänomenologie (Husserl) diese Positionierung erforscht. 

Das Feld ist im Vergleich zu Natur und Landschaft der Begriff, der den stärksten menschlichen Einfluss ausdrückt. Ein Feld in der Landwirtschaft mag zwar noch Teil einer Landschaft sein und gehört irgendwie zur Natur, aber es ist weitestgehend von menschlichen Einflüssen geformt. Menschen bestimmen, wie dieses Feld auszusehen hat und welche Kräfte auf ihm wirken sollen. Das ist zwar bei der phänomenologischen Position im Zentrum des Felds nicht genau so, doch bleibt auch das Feld ein Konzept, mit dem nur bestimmte Dinge und Aspekte verstanden werden. Aber ohne die Einbeziehung dieser Position hängen die anderen quasi in der Luft. Außerdem ist das die Position aus der heraus Kunst entsteht. Kunst entsteht nämlich vom Kunstschaffenden aus. Kunst benötigt einen starken Begriff von Individualität, die sich aber nicht der Welt gegenüber sieht, sondern in ihr steht. (Ensemble und Kollektiv als Kunstschaffende sind komplexe Spielarten der Individualität.)

Nature - Landscape - Field

27/11/2022

seen from the perspective of IRWEGK and Art

(Thesis: The concept of landscape contains the call to artistic life).

I would like to  explore the different varieties of the relationship between man and the world through the terms mentioned above and reflect on which of these relationships give hope on positive change for the endangered world we live in. 

The background for this research is IRWEGK.

The subject of contextualisation plays a role in my stimmf(i)eld-recordings, which I combine with this text. The recordings are created in sound situations that I find somewhere more or less by accident.  I do not create the situation, but place myself in it. I add my own vocal interventions to the sound situation. I try not to put the voice in the foreground, but to let it sound as part of the sound space. 

As always in my media arte povera activities, there is no big technical editing afterwards. Only the beginning and end of the track are sometimes slightly edited (fade in/out).

Nature

Nature is the most comprehensive of the terms in the headline. Nature seems to be everything, at least if one understands it cosmologically. At the same time, it is the most ambiguous term. It can mean many different things. 

The modern concept of nature, which we all carry with us and can no longer get rid of, places nature in opposition to culture. (The other confrontation, which is related to the first, sees man as opposed to nature. More on this later!). 

This opposition is fundamental to modern Europe. We have been shaped by it, and only very rarely is there a hint from other ways of thinking that it can also be thought differently. Then culture and nature are not opposed to each other, but are intertwined. 

One result of this division, which has become so apparent in recent decades, is the cultural distance of nature activists. There are many people and institutions that want to preserve and save nature, in which culture is seen as an adversary rather than a fellow campaigner. (This is another reason why the German Greens have never presented a convincing cultural agenda in their now long time of existence). Another example: Last Generation? 

That is only gradually changing. Nature does not exist! is a sentence that stands for this new tendency. It does not exist in the sense that it is presented as the opposite of culture. Culture, by the way, does not exist either. Now that the world as we knew it is falling apart, it is becoming clear that this separation is one of the reasons for the disaster. We must learn again to understand nature and culture as a common field (!). Then it will also no longer be possible, for example, to conduct economics as a science (?) in which the collateral damage that happens in nature is simply ignored and not integrated into one's calculations. Only in this way the world destruction (ecological and social) by capitalism was possible at all. 

The concept of a nature that stands in opposition to humans and the cultural world they have created was one of the preconditions for the triumph of capitalism. 

A new spirit that no longer obeys capitalism must be found and practised. This is a task that IRWEGK sets itself. The working thesis is: this spirit can be found in the field of art, which has a different way of understanding the relationship between the world and people than has been the norm in modernity. Not separation of subject and object, not seeing the world only as a scientific object or nature as a resource to be exploited, a rubbish bin or a recreation area. 

The Landscape

In my reflections on the concept of landscape, I refer to the writings of the author Volker Demuth: the article „Landschaftsentfaltung/unfolding of landscape" which appeared some time ago in Lettre International and Demuth's book entitled "Unruhige Landschaften/restless landscapes", subtitled "Ästhetik und Ökologie/ aesthetics and ecology" (Würzburg 2022).  The subtitle alone indicates that Demuth has a lot to teach us about a poetic-artistic understanding of the world, which we at IRWEGK seek to explore. 

Landscape is not an unproblematic concept either, but it has the potential to promote a way of thinking that practises respectful interaction with the world. The concept of landscape has not escaped unscathed in the era of capitalism and has long since been capitalistically boxed in: "We have, it seems, become accustomed in the majority to dividing landscape into two areas: on the one hand, into a space of experience, in which landscapes are kept ready as sentimental reception camps and wellness areas for those tired of civilisation and idylls provide aesthetic relaxants for the stressed psychological system; on the other hand, into a space of use, which we exploit and from which we make as much capital as possible. In bizarre parallelism, landscapes with intensive agro-industrial use and scenic tourism backdrops with recreational value lie directly next to each other." (Demuth, p. 56)

Landscape as a concept is more helpful than nature in understanding man's relationship to his habitat. Landscape is a "natural-social space", i.e. landscape is not simply nature, but a context composed of natural, social and cultural aspects that is somehow perceived as a unity. 

Nature, on the other hand, is the "other", something that seems to exist quite independently of culture or man. (Even though nature in this sense no longer exists at present because the whole earth is affected by human intervention).

Landscape is a system of relationships in which I am situated: sensual, emotional, cognitive - aesthetic, spiritual, giving meaning, relating.

I will list a few aspects of the concept of landscape from which a more comprehensive idea of landscape can be formed that supports the IRWEGK.

Landscape as a unit of life

In the Middle Ages, "landscape bound together the physicality of a region and those people who worked and spent their existence in it as a community into an inseparable unit of life". (Demuth, p. 53) We don't want to go back there, but we can learn something from this for our situation. If we understand ourselves as human beings in such a way that we are included in landscapes, we may recognise more quickly and better the ethical consequences that go hand in hand with our existence in the world. There is an ethos of relatedness. I have to relate to the references in which I live. The concept of landscape can help to re-establish an awareness of precisely this. 

Another important point of the old concept of landscape was its metaphysical dimension. In all cultures before modernity, spirits, gods or God were present in the landscape. That is, the sacred was always part of the landscape. This has become almost unimaginable for us today. The question is, how can we find something of this idea of sacredness again without having to rely on God or the gods? That is also what we try to practise at IRWEGK. 

To do this, it is important to realise that the original significance and "sacredness" of landscapes, with everything that can be found in them, has retreated into the sphere of art through aestheticisation in the course of Europe's modern development. There it hibernates until today and there we seek it out in order to reintegrate it into life with our modest means. We are now concerned with the aesthetic landscape:

Landscape as an aesthetic entity.

Later, in Renaissance and Modern Times, landscape becomes an aesthetic unity. As a human being, I suddenly look at a landscape (instead of being part of it), or even at a landscape painting. This looking triggers an inner reaction in me. That is, there is a correspondence of inside and outside. Talking about a landscape suddenly means talking about oneself. The correspondence of inner and outer landscapes becomes a guiding theme of Romanticism.

This too is a relatedness that can be important for our practice of exercising an artistic reference to the world. This is best done in combination with the earlier idea of landscape I outlined above. 

Now we can try to combine the notion of landscape with that of place. "Part of the constitution of humans is that they are part of space, not an abstract - logical, mathematical - space, but of places and landscapes." (Demuth, p. 55) 

The places where I live or to which I occasionally go represent landscapes or are the centres of landscapes placed around them. They are systems of reference that help determine how I live. There are dependencies, possibilities, conditions, opportunities, freedoms and necessities etc. that are connected to the landscape. 

(Landscape thus becomes a metaphorical concept and at the same time it remains a concrete concept). The concept of place helps to orientate in the system of landscapes. 

The Field

The concept of the field is obvious to someone who, like me, works with the label stimmfeld and hörfeld. I don't see field as an alternative to landscape, but as a term that allows us to examine a few aspects more closely. Two associations come to mind when thinking about the term field. On the one hand, I think of the agricultural field, i.e. a parcel of land - in the landscape - that is prepared in such a way that a certain plant and fruit thrives there. The idea of the field is as old as the invention of the systematic cultivation of grain about 12,000 years ago. However, the way fields are prepared has changed a lot. 

In this sense, the field is exposed to human intervention even more than the landscape. Seen in this way, the world now consists almost entirely of a succession of fields that have been changed to a greater or lesser extent by human influence. And in the capitalist concept of "nature", the world becomes a field that exists to wring as much as possible out of it in order to maximise profit. 

Now the question is: how can we change the conditions of these fields so that they once again give rise to landscapes in which humans are only one factor, and no longer the only decisive one?

The second association is that of the force field, a term that was only introduced by Michael Faraday in 1830. I am not going to delve into physics now, but define a force field quite unscientifically as a region in which an energetic situation is present that refers to itself, that is, has something to do with itself. In order to install this energetic situation, certain conditions are required that are given by the "bodies" that generate the force field. (Field coil, for example).

This is very close to what goes on in a voice performance as I understand it. I create and find conditions for a situation that promotes and allows certain actions and makes others more difficult. 

The voice field recordings are good examples of this. I find a situation that is somehow preformed in terms of sound and thus provides me with conditions that I have to bring into play for my intervention. What then emerges is perhaps more than a sound field: a soundscape. 

The image of the force field also allows me to draw my personal map, which shows the places and landscapes that have significance for me for whatever reason, with a suitable view. The places on the map become bodies from which the energetic fields radiate, onto the associated landscape and more importantly onto me, if I approach the places. This can happen in reality as a journey, but also ideally as a memory and imagination. Places that mean something to me have an effect on me even if I only move to them mentally. Using the force field metaphor in this way helps to bring a form of meaningfulness into the geography of one's own life that corresponds to the world view of a medieval European landscape in that the scale of the inner or outer map does not reflect the exact distance between place A and B, but emphasises the significant places standing in a network of relationships. Unlike in the Middle Ages, religious imprinting no longer plays the dominant role here, but I am able to use the idea of force fields to draw an individual map that can be read by others. 

(Demuth, while walking on a Byzantine path on the Greek island of Paros. Island of Paros, p. 120: "For a few moments I allow myself the illusion of walking in the magnetic field of Constantinople, aligned like a tiny metal spike by the irresistible and discarded splendour of a God-fearing empire.")

Now I want to revisit the question of man's relationship to nature, landscape, field, by listing the attitudes or positions that can be taken by humans in the various localities. All these positions bring out partial aspects:

1.    I am positioned opposite the world. There nature, here I am. The somewhat hackneyed saying: nature doesn't need us, but we need nature, reflects this attitude quite well. The underlying idea is that there is nature on the one hand and people on the other. That is not entirely wrong. Humans have a special role, which is expressed, for example, in the fact that there is a cultural evolution that takes place quite differently and much faster than natural evolution. This cultural evolution only exists in humankind. This has led to the distinction between nature on the one hand and culture on the other. Nature as that which exists independently of humans and culture as the totality of man-made things and structures. What was overlooked for a long time was that culture is interwoven into natural contexts, just like human beings themselves.

2.    The human being is positioned within a landscape. The big picture is the landscape with its reciprocal references, the material, aesthetic and energetic conditions that hold the landscape together, so to speak. And in this, the human being is positioned somewhere without being particularly distinguished. In this image of the relationship between man and the world, quite different dependencies and conditions come to the surface than in the concept of nature. Man is part of the landscape and is shaped by it, just as the landscape is or at least can be shaped by man. We live in a time in which there is neither a nature untouched by humans nor a landscape without human contribution. But the concept of landscape makes it clearer that in this shaping we are changing ourselves and our direct living conditions. (Gaia as landscape?) Landscape allows much more than the concept of nature to be understood aesthetically or better poetically. Landscape always has form, nature remains an abstract concept.

3.    The world unfolds from the zero point of my bodily position. This phenomenological position or attitude brings something into play that is not considered in the other two terms. My embeddedness in the world as a perceiving and acting being happens from the zero point of my body. The world unfolds around me from the centre of my real position in space and time. I always experience the world as seen from me. Nature and landscape are concepts that both construct a relationship between human being and world that allows certain possibilities of interpreting this relationship. If I start from the way I - as an example of the human being - find myself in the world, then the image of a field, or more precisely a force field with me as its centre, fits well. In philosophy, phenomenology (Husserl) has explored this positioning. 

Compared to nature and landscape, the field is the term that expresses the strongest human influence. A field in agriculture may still be part of a landscape and somehow belong to nature, but it is largely shaped by human influences. People determine what this field should look like and what forces should act on it. This is not exactly the case with the phenomenological position at the centre of the field, but the field also remains a concept with which only certain things and aspects are understood. But without the inclusion of this position, the others are virtually hanging in the air. Moreover, this is the position from which art emerges. Art, in fact, emerges from the creator of art. Art needs a strong concept of individuality, which, however, does not stand in front of the world, but in it. (Ensemble and collective as creators of art are complex varieties of individuality).

What is a voice performance? (1)

Die deutsche Version dieses Textes ist erschienen in meinem Buch: In Gedanken: singen

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Außerdem gibt es eine deutschsprachige Version auf einem anderem Blog:

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17/08/2022

When Alfred Wolfsohn returned to teaching voice after the Second World War (this time in London) in his circle of students a number of voices quickly developed to an extraordinary vocal range. With this development the question has arisen as to how and in what context these extended voices can be used artistically. Wolfsohn hoped for composers who would write parts for the extended voices, which encompassed all the classical vocal ranges*. Roy Hart, his early student and predecessor, collaborated with a number of contemporary composers** and invited authors to write pieces for him and the Roy Hart Theatre***. In the 1960s and 1970s theatre was particularly suitable as a platform for radical artistic experimentation.

The question of which artistic possibilities the liberated voice offers is still relevant today and must be asked anew again and again. Besides my work in the field of music and theatre, my preoccupation with this question has led me into the direction of performance art. This is not necessarily an obvious consequence and I would like to present here a few experiences and reflections that I have encountered along the way. 

An important reason why I turned to performance art is that I realised how much and exclusively the voice has a serving function in theatrical contexts, in recitations and in music - however unconventional the forms may be. The voice serves the purpose of introducing a text, a piece, a character, a melody or an improvisational phrase, a composition or whatever****. I was instead interested in the idea of giving the voice the leading role in an artistic setting. In other words, I want to find out what meaning and effect the sound of the voice itself can develop, independently of text and music. 

So what remains of the voice when it is freed from all its serving functions? What is the voice in itself?

Performance art offers me a framework in which I can pursue this question in a way that I can't find anywhere else. 

*In the 1950s this did not go beyond a few attempts. One composition by the German composer Dieter Schnebel deserves special attention. In the score of his work "Für Stimmen (...missa est) dt. 31,6" he speaks of Wolfsohnian  voices, referring to the voices he heard in a radio programme about Wolfsohn. Unfortunately, however, he never tried to contact Wolfsohn, as he told me in a telephone conversation.

 **With Karlheinz Stockhausen and Peter Maxwell Davies, among others.

 ***One of the authors was Paul Pörtner, who also included Roy Hart in radiophonic radio plays.

****This seems to be a kind of fate of the voice, which was already reduced by Plato to its serving function. Cf. on this from me: Wege zur Stimme, p.23ff.

Performance Art today

Through my involvement with Performance Art, a tendency has developed in my artistic work to search for the possible role of the human voice in the visual arts in general. Does the human voice, which no longer moves within the framework of predefined aesthetic parameters but examines all its vocal possibilities for artistic use, have a place in the space of visual art? What could this be, a vocal sculpture or installation? Or indeed: What is a vocal performance? In this last question, I start from an understanding of performance art that does not assign this art form to the performing arts, but sees the roots of performance art in painting and sculpture. Today, the concept of performance has become much more extended than it was originally intended to be*, and perhaps it is time to find a more appropriate and, above all, less exhausted term for one's own work**. But for the time being I will stick to the term and try to position my work as a voice artist within the framework of performance art. 

Hardly any other term has become so widespread in the scene of the last twenty years, encompassing all disciplines of art, as performance. Strangely enough, something very similar has happened in parallel in the business world***. This cannot be pure coincidence. The cultural theorist Christoph Bartmann makes the appropriate claim that performance is the art form of advanced capitalism. The manager and the performance artist (of both sexes) are the brotherly/sisterly prototypes for the "entrepreneurial self". For both, working with processes plays a major role. For both, what used to be called self-realisation is an important component. Become who you are! Nietzsche said, and today this is one of the great calls to all those who want to act halfway successfully in this system. According to Bartmann, the performance artist shows what this could mean. "Only in performance do we prove that we have a self at all and that we are reliably different from others. That we are ourselves when we work, and not merely recipients of instructions. (...) Artistic performances, no matter how radically unconventional they may be, contribute significantly to the modelling of our new, entrepreneurial subjectivity.“**** 

The criticism that performance art is a model for the agents of neoliberal capitalism cannot simply be ignored by art. On the other hand, it must not let itself be fooled by this. For there remains (at least) one crucial difference: while neoliberalism believes it has found in the entrepreneurial self an image of humanity that serves the purposes and needs of the late capitalist system most effectively, performance art is an art form that uses its means to radically question what it can mean to be human at all today. Incidentally, this is a task that vocal art in the tradition of Alfred Wolfsohn and Roy Hart has also undertaken since its beginnings. 

*Cf. the graphic that Boris Nieslony and Gerhard Dirmoser have developed on the subject of performance art, which is itself artistic again: http://gerhard_dirmoser.public1.linz.at/A0/Perform_Basis06_A0.pdf

**The American artist Terry Fox was one of the pioneers of performance art in the 60s and 70s of the last century. He and his work had a great influence on me. In a conversation with him, Terry Fox told me that he, like many other pioneers of performance art, stopped performing at the end of the 70s at the latest. They all had the feeling that the time for this kind of art was over, that the basic social conditions no longer allowed them to make subversive art in this way. Performance was about to fail because of its success, which has been growing ever since. He avoided the term performance and called his actions, which, incidentally, often had a sonic character, situations. I borrow that term from him from time to time!

***The term emerged more or less simultaneously in three areas in the USA in the 1950s, when Peter Drucker began to write his management concepts, Paul Austin introduced the performative turn in philosophy with the idea of the speech act, and indeed artists began to place the process of creating art on an equal basis with the so-called result.

****Christoph Bartmann, Leben im Büro, München 2012, p. 2016. More about this subject in my Essay: Künstler sein im Kapitalismus, S.44ff.

Voice in the arts

The extended voice can be used and found in all performing arts. There are voice artists who expand the framework of what is commonly understood by singing in the various disciplines: in Jazz and Improvised Music, in New Music, into which it has found its way partly through Roy Hart, but also in modern and especially in the so-called post-dramatic theatre - where the Roy Hart Theatre has also done pioneering work. In addition, the extended voice can be found in literature and poetry, in connection with dance and in performance art.

But what is the difference between the use of the extended voice in the classical vocal arts and in performance, leaving aside the question of the servant function of the voice?

Before I can start to define this difference more precisely, I have to talk about what a performance is for me in general. As I said, this is an overused term; nevertheless, it is possible to give a few conditions that at least capture my understanding of performance art more precisely. My suggestion is:

Performance is an artistic process with a more or less open result,

- in which the performer is part of the process as a physically (vocally) existing human being,

- which has a relationship of some kind to the public, i.e. can be followed more or less directly by people (I avoid the term audience!*),

- which takes place within a well-defined framework of self-imposed rules and found or installed conditions, within which the unpredictable may and should happen,

- into which external factors can intervene, such as real time or location-dependent features, 

- in which coincidences can intervene,

- in which decisions can be made during the process that influence the course in a previously indeterminable way.

*I also don't want to exclude the possibility that there are performances where no one but the performers are present and which are not documented in order to show them later as a video.

Performance as experiment

Performance art has the character of an experiment. The situation created in a performance is an experimental set-up, but one that has a few crucial differences from a scientific experiment. The scientist will make every effort not to have any direct influence on the course of the experiment. In a scientific experiment, the researcher sets up the experiment, but afterwards remains entirely in the position of an observer, in order, as is said, not to falsify the result. This is quite different in performance art. Performance artists make themselves part of the experiment. They enter the experimental set-up and let the events of the process initiated by the situation have an effect on them. In performance, I am both a researcher and a research object. 

An artistic experiment also differs from a scientific one in that the execution of the experiment in the performance already represents the result. In science, the result consists of the data provided by the experiment and the conclusions to be drawn from it. That is not what art is about. The action is already the result. Artistic research in performance art does not collect data; it explores the world not as an object but as the world into which I am born as a human being and to which I belong in every way. Both scientists and artists are researchers. They both want to understand something about the world, but the understanding they seek, the way they want to understand, is entirely different*.

*Here another fundamental difference between the manager who sees himself as a performer and a performance artist becomes apparent. The manager's activities are aimed at good performance, which - similar to and yet different from science - will be reflected in figures. It is about success in entrepreneurial action, which always points beyond the concrete activity to the economic consequences of the actions. The performance artist would reject this means-purpose logic for her art actions. the performance is the result. Both in the sense of the success of the planned action and in relation to the reaction of the audience, success or failure are secondary aspects, albeit possibly ones that are longed-for.

Voice performance?

Which special conditions are added to the idea of performance art as outlined here when it is a voice performance? 

Of course, the voice can in principle be present in any performance, without therefore already being a voice performance. I distinguish for this reason between performances in which the voice appears as one aspect alongside other equally important elements, themes or ideas and, on the other hand, the actual voice performance, which is designed from the voice and its possibilities and in which the voice is at the centre. All other aspects of the performance, such as the space, the temporal structure, the rules and conditions of the situation, subordinate themselves to the voice or arrange themselves around the voice as the central moment. 

In voice performance, the performer is not only and not primarily present with the body, but with the voice. This changes the whole concept of space in which the performance takes place. With the eyes - which usually perceive the performer's body - I can focus on one area of the space and block out the other actions that may be going on at the same time. This is not so easy with voices and sounds. Every vocal sound is equally present in the room, only differentiated by its tonal qualities. In principle, I always hear everything that happens sonically in a room at the same time. Especially for group performances, this results in the necessity to consider in vocal actions that the simultaneity of events is reflected in the auditory perception of the audience and the performers. In body-oriented performances, I as an artist can move relatively independently of other performers acting in the same space. My voice, on the other hand, is always experienced immediately by myself and by everyone else in the space in connection with the sound events taking place at the same time. 

In performance, as I understand it, the extended voice has a different function or characteristic than in other art forms. In music or theatre, the voice is in the extended sense a tool that I as a voice artist can use/play as skillfully as possible. In a performance things are different for me. Here I do not simply have my (whole) voice at my disposal, but I provide my voice with a framework or a field in which it can act as freely as possible. Free here also means free of my ideas, thoughts, concepts. The "entrepreneurial self" has to hold back here in favour of the openness of the voice, which can thus act in ways that are unforeseen, even for me. These are all aspects that can also appear with the voice in other artistic contexts, but here they are at the very centre. Through the auditory access to the performatively designed world that shows itself to me, my perception of the world as a whole becomes different. Nietzsche says: "The ear hears the sound! A completely different wonderful conception of the same world“*. The subject that dominates the world is constituted in the eye. In hearing, I am integrated into the space of sound. The things seen are within my reach. Hearing, I am within the reach of sound and thus of the world. Seeing I construct my world, hearing I am exposed (in) it and become part of it. 

*F. Nietzsche: Nachgelassene Fragmente 1869-74, Bd. 7, ed. by V. Colli-Montinari, p. 440

Voice performance and improvisation

How does the idea of vocal performance relate to improvisation as an artistic form? In our work with vocal group performances (with the ensemble KörperSchafftKlang), we try to look at and use both forms separately, although there is of course overlap. But improvisation is first and foremost a musical form, and the way in which improvisation sounds together follows musical principles of listening and responding to each other. In vocal performance, as I understand it, something else happens. On the one hand, we try to be as open as possible with our ears to the vocal events that occur in the space. But the voices remain largely active within the framework of what I have chosen to do with my voice. As a result, unforeseen and unheard sounds happen, whose musical character arises at the earliest during listening and not already through the way I react (just improvising) to another sound. This does not prevent voices from sounding together and the performers from exploring these moments with each other. The free play of the voices with each other also has its space here. But what is more interesting here is that the often very strict guidelines given to the voices in the performance lead to sonic events that would be very unlikely in a musical or improvisational approach*.

*Together with my partner Agnes Pollner, I experimented with these ideas on the CD Wellen Laenge. On the one hand, there are very strict rules of breathing and the way we let a vocal sound begin or end; at the same time, we listened in a very concentrated way to our two voices, but then gave the voices the freedom to act and react within this framework independently of our musical ideas, so to speak. A sound example can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/hoerfeld/expansion-1.

Aspects of my vocal performances

In my solo vocal performances, a few preferences and patterns have developed over time. I work relatively rarely with sound amplification and microphone, because this changes the space and the feeling of the space very much. The microphone and speakers create their own sound space that is added to the original space where people are present together. This is often confusing and detracts from the effect of the original space that is chosen in a performance for a reason. Listening to a voice, in a performative context, means sharing a common space with the person who is showing his or her voice. Electronic amplification of voices represents an artificial alteration of this space. This can of course be very appealing, but in my work it has turned out that it is often better to let the space itself resonate. Only then can a vocal performance interact with place and space. 

In my vocal performances, the audience is usually invited to come and leave the place whenever they want. The relationship with the audience is one of the central and often difficult aspects in the installation of a performative situation. For me, it is important to invite the audience to listen to what kind of sound event emerges in the space with my voice, without thinking too much about music. That also means pushing the idea of a concert as far into the background as possible. Instead, I have in mind the idea of a vocal sculpture that you listen to for a while and then decide how long you want to spend with it. You might just walk past it for a moment, or you might get curious, sit down and try to establish contact with the vocal sculpture. Because of the freedom of choice I give the audience, they become part of the situation and the atmosphere in a very strong way. This in turn also has an effect on my voice and its movements. 

In a voice performance I try to be in deep contact with the different dimensions of my being: with my body, the inner situation, my reactions to the outer situation and the changes that happen in it. At the same time, I let my voice act as freely as possible from myself. Although I try to follow the rules I give my voice in advance, I don't want to express my feelings, thoughts or pain directly vocally during the performative process. Rather, I try to give my voice the space to move freely as I enter into close contact with everything that is happening internally and externally. Strong connection and great freedom. 

So what is a voice performance? Every artist can only find an answer to this question for him or herself. But by trying to circumscribe the idea of voice performance for me, it is intended to make clear that voice performance is an artistic form that differs from other forms of performing art and possibly offers completely new approaches to acting with the voice within the artistic sphere.