Crossing
Voices is the kind of project I will always want to be a part of. A project
that was so resonant to experience, it’s ruined others by comparison and
informed me massively on how I want to develop my own stuff. I got to spend
nearly a week in Venice, learning from and sharing with 5 brilliant poets, a
remarkable curator, working toward genuinely innovative work, in the shadow of
a Venetian venice, well away from the Disneyland city I had experienced before.
Just a privilege from the first moment to the last. http://crossingvoices.weebly.com/
Crossing
Voices is the child of Alessandro Mistrorigo, who is part of the faculty at the
University in Venice, and who had connected with James Wilkes in the UK, and
being part of the collective Mopha with Jamie, and Emma Bennett, who also attended,
I found myself invited to be part of the program. The format had six of us,
three Brits and three Italians, spending three days together in the Cultural
Flow Zone (!) workplace connected to the library of the University, which was
pretty much on the water in Venice, developing six brand new pieces of
collaborative work, each led by one of us, and involving the other five of us.
These six pieces would be performed back to back at a night in the University.
To make this
work was an extraordinary achievement on Alessandro’s part, to choose the right
people, to make sure the context of their experience together was conducive to
the work, to emphasise the process and shape the direction. It was an amazingly
energising experience to be part of, the works were so exploratory and there
really was the space to workshop things, take things into new directions, and
all of us were together in risking that. Such a rare thing, to have the time
and space to really collaborate. The Italian poets were all young, humble,
eccentric and authentic – Alessandro Burbank, a gentle bear like presence who
would descend on the group as quickly as he would disappear, a true Venetian,
who mediated the city for us. Andrea Leonessa, immensely open, intense,
technologically considered and genuinely innovative. Ariadne Radi Cor – a poet,
but also a live writer, a penwoman, a gentle, visual presence.
We arrived
straight into a reading in a gallery on Guidecca, or Judgment Island, getting a
full whack of the really interesting local poets, who read with video or music
accompaniment, and seemed really open to the more conceptual, avant garde work
we were presenting. Emma did a beautiful birdsong performance, and Jamie, his
wonderful delayed feedback strokeout work. I did some new performative stuff
from Fights, I thought it was a bit naff in the end, punching the air,
stuttering, but I wanted to try it. We were introduced to each other through
this reading, the group was exposed to each other before we would spend three
days in close quarters, in a room, having to trust each other, push each other,
before a looming performative deadline.
The first day
we shared the concepts we had prepared before the meeting, ideas that were
reasoned but not fully formed, and the complimentary nature of the directions
we wanted to go in was immediately apparent. I wanted to use the project to try
something to do with song, with choral multivocal techniques that use
multiplicity to mediate atonality, something Im interested in because I cant
sing. I used a lot of musical references to introduce, sacred harp singing,
Calabrian fishing work songs, Swans. Emma developed a piece based on
repetition, and unfamiliar languages, that evolved live into a brilliant
Chinese whispers circle, where we would race around our hexagon, mauling words
and phrases as they passed from mouth to mouth. James had brought some amazing
visual materials, acetate and inks, and gave us the chance to create
collaboration asemic and calligraphic works. These were developed and then read
as scores by us in pairs, Cobbing esque, reading abstraction as noise. Andrea
designed a program that read his voice, awkwardly, and read into his computer
while playing a flight simulator, leaving James, Emma and I to live interpret
the bastardised text that would scroll out after he spoke. Ariadne used his
full range of skills to actually shoot and edit a beautiful short film over the
3 days, and Alessandro created a really complex psychogeographical live skype
performance with Greek chorus accompaniment, half translations, security camera
streaming and live google searches. Hard to explain.
The works
developed over hours and hours, but over our breakfasts and our evening meals
as much as in the workshop. We were treated to local treatment, masses of
seafood, black spaghetti, long walks through the city, live translations,
Venetian wit and hospitality. The entirety of the experience was genuinely
absorbing, and for me, a week back from an equally overwhelming experience in
Iraq, in which time I contracted norovirus and was in fever blindness, I felt
like everything was somehow more immediate for feeling so ethereal. Venice has
that about it, when you can get it without feeling utterly outside. The company
of the people made it, channelled so carefully by the gentility and
intelligence of James and Alessandro.
I loved the
experience of the performance itself, really rare to feel collaboration as
truly collective. The audience seemed to feel that, that they were invited to
become a further extension of what had become a miniature, fleeting community
of artists. The war of it brought us into friendships too, having to balance so
many elements creatively and performatively, and to step outside of our normal
zones. The final night, like the others, was spent around a food filled table,
talking, until late, until we got the boat home. Sad to leave it behind, but I
am sure it won’t be the last note of a remarkable thing. I’m very lucky I was a
small part of it.
