Echoes and Transformations (performed publication)

Performed publication: ‘Echoes and Transformations’, edition of 40, 2016, 50x70cm - during exhibition ‘Echoes and Transformations’, White Conduit Projects, London, 20 Oct – 9 Nov 2016.

Performance with NaoKo TakaHashi, 20 Oct 2016, 15min, 4 parts (folded publication, pencil, electro-acoustic amplification with effects pedals, spoken word).

Performance with Kaho Aso, 2 Nov 2016, 15min, 4 parts (folded publication, 4 photographs, scissors, glue, live projection, Noh flute, Kotsuzumi, drum calls).

Conceived as diptychs in an exhibition context, the image-pairs strive to invert a conventional understanding of active subject and passive object positions by combining images of insides of masks that seem to change between concave and convex shapes, with images of whitened faces whose static positions remind of classical sculptures. The white here works as a non-representational space: an empty stage, a placeholder or insertion that enables an enacting of imaginary personae who are, similar to Noh characters, seemingly caught in retrospective states. They are sculpted and still, long before photography rendered them immutable, evoking a sense of premonition and awareness.
As part of the printed publication ('Echoes and Afterlives') the double pages of masks and faces actually fold onto each other in the process of moving through the pages, thus literally donning a mask onto a face or shoeing a face into a mask. At the same time the publication includes two kinds of text – the first observing fragments from the actor’s moving body on stage, the other combining metaphors of whiteness from different literary contexts into double triplets thus developing other levels of agency, voice and embodiment.
In a performance context, the acting out of the initial publication and its later editioned reproduction as a live-collage-projection ('Echoes and Transformation') enabled me to invite different sound artists into the work. These collaborations prompted me to rethink the work not only in relation to a timeline, but also as part of improvisation and rescaling processes, while my own gestures of cutting and folding the pages interacted with the respective sonic environments, which opened up the work through elements of layering, decollage and overwriting.