Response to CJA at Shift Happens

Monday 5th July 2010

CJA performed at the Shift Happens conference for 'Art Learning and Technology'. This was the first time a visual element had been composed and implemented by visual artists live during the performance: Ciaran Bagnall (lighting designer) and Damian Cruden (director).

Some thoughts from the 'inside'
I suspect that the visual language was too strong to focus the eye on the ear and instead the ocularcentricity of Western audiences understood it from a primarily visual context, placing the aural realm as a 'backing' to this low-key projection. My fear with this scenario is that it would fall into hybrid of no particular focus and, if I witnessed someone else attempt it, I would hate it.

This is not a reflection on the people involved, but it says more about the working process - flying people straight into a gig with no rehearsal.

Furthermore, the musicians were heavily masked allowing their heads to 'float' above a black footer. For me, there is something special about witnessing a musician a) embody an instrument and b) embody a sense of place, the sound theatre. As I understand this - backed up by Nicola LeFanu's statement about the studio performance - there is a double empathy induced in the spectator ... a deep and complex understanding of what 'they are doing' and what 'we are hearing'.

I extend this to all the natural gestures within ev2 as we are double embodied in the wholeness of the music: we are emboying an instrument 'playing' with embedded material, whilst using our ears to make sense of the whole thing ... in MP words we are embodying the perception to get to grips with the phemononology.

Aside from this I experienced a double empathy for the first time recently - watching a run of Railway Children the character Peter gave Schapanski a boy-to-father-figure hug as he said goodbye. I felt myself projecting my own son's empathy on this experience; in a sense it wasn't me who was 'feeling' the hug, but I was seeing through my sons eyes, what it would be like to witness this theatrical act and 'feel' the hug.

I mention this because it is something akin to how I imagine people are experiencing ev2 performing CJA ... so why hide us behind a black footer? The answer is simple "to tidy us up" as Damian joked (no he was serious). There is something really important here:
1) we need to be seen, ev2 ARE the performative element that makes it stand out from an ordinary EA gig with a VJ
2) our gestures are natural and unforced separating from 60's music theatre. It is not a theatre of gesture and spectacle but of embodiment (Mike Kenny knew this)
3) The visual should not be 'around us' but from us, it must work to accentuate these central characters (or meta-characters), extending in ways ev2 can not (as we are not trained actors but something different) our personality and mood.