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Monument

2020

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Multimedia Work

Monument is a work with multiple performance incarnations and media objects. At its core is a two-page text generated from encyclopaedia entries on the western arts disciplines, manipulated and re-ordered with additional imagery.

The graphic score version of the piece, which incorporates the text into a painted scroll, was created for Italian violinist Silvia Tarozzi, and is divided into seven open-ended movements.


I. the First Movement – Breathe

Permit yourself to breathe (just breathe).


II. the Second Movement – Observe

Observe (with the eyes, the ears, the body, the breath): the largeness of strokes, the wholeness of forms, vast gesture, giant shapes, architecture.


III. the Third Movement – Dig

Take your tool and begin to dig. Uncover the layers of history in a centimetre. Feel the traces of movement and thought. Widen your search. Open the cavity of time. Pause for breath.


IV. the Fourth Movement – Follow

Allow the eye to lead the arm, the hand, the fingers, the feet. Scan freely. Change direction. Fall over. Run around. Where do you find yourself?


V. the Fifth Movement – Speak

Dive into nonsense. Fragment your language. Conjure images and words. Babble and recite poetically. Can you speak when your eyes are closed? Mumble.


VI.the Sixth Movement – Collapse

Shatter the world you have built. Break the things you have made sacred. Close up. Hide your treasures. Let no-one see you.


VII.the Seventh Movement – Read (only once)

Read left to right (or right to left, or up to down, or down to up) in full, then close.


The text features in INTIMACIES, read as part of a chorus in the track "Monument".

The standalone text was featured in the MASS Collection and performed in recitation in Where's the Flour (Quarantine Concert, Brutalust and SavileCal), and can be viewed below.





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