During this morning’s class, Jose gathered us to talk about ideas for a live performance we would be performing in a week. To come up for ideas for this performance, Jose got the class to participate in an automatic writing exercise. Using this automatic writing exercise, we were able to subconsciously generate themes that were in common with the group. The words I chose were;
We then began to narrow down the themes that we had in common during the automatic writing exercise. The two main themes we chose to work with were war and occultism. We then took the class outside to begin a brainstorming session to organise the aims and logistics of how the performance would work. We decided that we would each use a sound source and improvise over synthesis and music we had made prior to the performance. We would also be using visuals to compliment the sonic aspect and religious / occultist implications of the performance. We wanted to create the appearance of our own cult, using sound and sigils to invert traditional religious sounds and imagery. We planned for myself to be in a figurative position of power, with the other members of the group slowly dragging me into their cult by symbolically putting a bag on my head.
For my sound source, I decided to use my WWII tank commanders throat microphone as I felt the object had significance both thematically and sonically. I planned to record myself shouting and screaming in tongues for my sound layer, we agreed that doing so complimented the themes and aims of the piece. With this in mind, I went home and began the processes of recording.
I liked some of the ideas and themes integrated within our piece, although I found most of them to be too general and the choreography to be logistically confusing. I feel like we needed more time as a group to better establish the themes of the piece so that it may feel more connected and purposeful.