An Empath’s Anarchive explores vulnerability, empathy, intimacy and the sharing of memories and information through idiosyncratic processes. Although specific to these particular artists, these exchanges, formed as a result of trying to learn and understand the other, have a universal message – empathy is necessarily a process of shedding of one’s own singularity, whether in the experience of one’s bodily sensations or those feelings of difference when visiting a foreign land. It is a soft, new, quality of light, that extends beyond what our imagination of what being human could so far embrace. It is a hard-learnt and hard-won skill moulded of time and awareness. It is all worth it, not only in the end but throughout the entire journey of mutual discovery.
With this highly personal show we hope unearth questions about how we all relate to one another.
curated & produced by Linda Jankowska
Doors 19:30 | performance 20:00 | entry £8 / £5
Programme:
Sam Salem – The Raft Breaks, for solo violin, objects, live electronics, tape (2019)
performer – Linda Jankowska
intermission
Jessica Aszodi/Kathryn Williams – Vagus Correspondences, for 2 performers (2019)
Katie Wood – “I Was Your Girlfriend” (Prince cover) – documentation of a spoken text performance for 6 (2017)
Donal Sarsfield – Glorify the brick, for baritone and organised sound (2018)
programme notes:
The Raft Breaks (2019)
“hast’ou swum in a sea of air strip through an aeon of nothingness,
when the raft broke and the waters went over me” Ezra Pound / Cantos LXXX
In 2017, I travelled to Poznań with Linda Jankowska in order to gather materials for The Raft Breaks.
After Iain Sinclair, we participated in our own act of “ambulatory divination”, with Linda’s life forming the basis of our map, our trajectories arcing through her memory.
We recorded actions and ambiences.
The Uinal work is situated in its own territory. It is private, psychogeographic, mythographic.
A violin emerges from a plastic foot-pump.
A forest creaks.
A dialog between the living and dead envelops us. But, apologetically, the bubble bursts.
A storm erases: we are surprised by its beauty even in the midst of overwhelming violence.
Linda Jankowska is a violinist, new music performer, concert producer, researcher and violin teacher. Her artistic interests orbit around long-term collaborations and a multifaceted performance practice that stretches her limitations.
www.lindajankowska.com
Sam Salem
I create audiovisual works for performers, electronics and video, which challenge traditional notions of concert presentation and instrumental virtuosity.
My compositional process begins with a set of locations, a line on a map connected by a particular theme, history or set of constraints. I capture moments, surprises, and ultimately, like prominent London-based psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, I offer a reading of my chosen locations, a divination made through an “act of ambulatory sign- making”. I excavate my locations, and the layers of myth and history that I uncover form my building blocks.
www.osamahsalem.co.uk
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Vagus Correspondences is a hyper-personal, body centric, stream of consciousness conversation across geography and time between two performer-devisors, Kathryn Williams (flute) and Jessica Aszodi (voice). We’re building an empath’s anarchive of found objects, texts, letters, devised scores, recordings, and pictures taken from our daily experience, living in separate countries, over a 3 month period. We add to the anarchive on a daily basis, amassing a shared narrative of our travels, music-making, embodied activities, and our relationship. Through these correspondences we create physical experiences for each other (for example, Kathryn will copy Jess’ workout for the day, or Jess will try to emulate Kathryn’s new technique for breath activated nervous-system manipulation), devise pieces for the other to test out, and share evidence of the music and people who affect us. These correspondences will become source material for a series of multi-sensory vignettes created and performed by Williams and Aszodi; voices, instruments, bodies, video and electronics combining thick and fast to show the results of our empathic experiment.
Australian vocalist Jessica Aszodi’s career could be described as genre-bounding & label-defying. Her performances have been described as “thrilling…” (LA Times) & “intense…” (NY Times). She has premiered dozens of new pieces, performed baroque rarities, devised new collaborative projects, sung roles from the standard operatic repertoire and worked with a constellation of artists from the far reaches of the musical palette.
www.jessicaaszodi.com
Kathryn Williams is a flautist and composer whose work focuses upon transgressing real or imagined limits of physical and musical abilities. Her interests are currently centred around breathing and finding ways of overcoming asthma to more powerfully connect with her respiratory system, leading her to undertake freediving training and commission flute pieces limited to a single breath.
www.kathryngwilliams.com
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Katie Wood – “I Was Your Girlfriend” (Prince cover)
documentation of a spoken text performance for 6, September 2017
Katie Wood is a sound artist who creates soundscapes, videos, transmissions and live works featuring sounds of water and wind, howls, whispers, seismic vibrations, and radio interference. Their work deals with knowledge production around land and landscape.
https://www.katiewoodkatiewood.com
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Donal Sarsfield – GLORIFY THE BRICK (2018)
“It’s important, you see, that you honor the material that you use… You can only do it if you honor the brick and glorify the brick”..
Louis Kahn, Lecture at Pratt Institute (1973)
As a composer I primarily record, transform and organise sounds. I was born in the west of Ireland and currently live in Liverpool, where amongst other things I sing in a Renassiance choir.
soundcloud.com/donalsarsfield
