More Than One Thing (Installation)

More Than One Thing is an installation of audiovisual studio-documents recorded as part of Henry’s PhD research, under the title “More Than One Thing: A Practice-Led Investigation Into Transdisciplinary Free Improvisation In Sound And Movement”. With a particular interest in intersections of embodied sounding and moving, the project has brought together improvisers from across a spectrum of dance, music, and other performance practices in live-studio sessions and telematic environments throughout the Covid-19 Pandemic. Participants in More Than One Thing have been encouraged to explore spontaneous collective meaning-making in a studio context where discipline is explored critically as but one of myriad factors comprising individual thresholds for expressive activity. Closed-studio footage, and annotated experimental video-documents from More Than One Thing were presented in 2022’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival as a videographic installation in the Create Lab. A series of excerpts, cut into five hour (+) long films, subsequently annotated as a form of “illuminated video” (Spatz, 2020, Queering Annotation: Entanglements of Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research Video)

​The installation also featured placement of several objects featured in the studio footage as sculpture around the Lab space, and a placard with Henry’s “as” over “is”: Manifesto of Transdisciplinary Free Improvisation.

​The installation was produced by hcmf//, and technically managed by Stephen Calcutt.

​Participating Artists in the films were: Sky Su, David Yates, Skye Reynolds, Michael Schumacher, Colin Frank, Maria Sappho, Brice Catherin, Catherine Cary, Juan-Fran Cabrera, Faradena Afifi, Henry McPherson, Tim Tsang, Laurent Estoppey

With additional thanks to the following for their contributions to the research: Anke Ames, Manon Parent, Chris Parfitt, Giorgio Convertito, Jaak Sikk, Jolon Dixon, Lise Baeyerns, Manrico Fiorentini, Rachel Dean, Simon Rose, Zoe Katsilerou, and Jer Reid