Interstitial listening

Display Schedule

Subject guarantor

Bohumíra ELIÁŠOVÁ, Michal RATAJ

Name of lecturer(s)

Bohumíra ELIÁŠOVÁ, Michal RATAJ

Department

The subject provides Composition Department

Contents

IINTERSTITIAL LISTENING: Embracing generative tension in music-dance collaboration.

Lectures: John MacCallum – composer

Teoma Naccarato - choreographer

In this full-day workshop, we present strategies for collaboration in music, dance, and interactive performance. Through shared practice and discussion, the aim of the workshop is to interrogate deeply rooted ideas about time, movement, and bodies that underlie disciplinary training in our fields, and that inspire generative tension in the context of inter- and trans-dsiciplinary work.

As a starting point, we will introduce a practice of Interstitial Listening (IL) which has evolved throughout our past 10-years of collaboration. IL is a multisensory listening practice, aimed at tuning awareness of how rhythms emerge in movement and music. Further, it is a technique for exploring and reimagining habits of relation between performers and media in real-time. At the heart of IL is an impossible task – that is, to synchronize one’s own actions with that of any other person or thing. Each IL session involves a series of repetitive tasks, such as tapping, breathing, walking, or improvising movement and music alongside a metronome that starts out regular, but becomes increasingly unpredictable and difficult to align with. With each tick of the metronome, you are asked to bring awareness to the temporal gaps, or interstices, that emerge between yourself and another; each interstice is an opportunity to explore and intervene aesthetically in relationships of interaction and representation. At its core, IL is about cultivating sensitivity to differences between diverse temporalities and agencies in performance. Fine-tuning sensitivity to these moments of divergence and convergence – minor as they may seem – provides opportunities to explore dynamic, rhythmic relationships between multiple temporal processes, human and otherwise, without subjugating one temporality to another.

Building from the practice of IL, we will offer scores for structured improvisation that are valuable in de-stabilizing, re-imagining, and expanding approaches to choreography and composition. The question we hope to leave you with in this workshop, is how can we sustain collaborative processes based on deep and nuanced differences that matter to each of us, and between all of us?

Learning outcomes

PARTICIPATION IN THE WORKSHOP

Prerequisites and other requirements

none

Literature

THE ARTISTS

Teoma Naccarato and John MacCallum have been collaborating since they met in 2013. Their collective work draws on their backgrounds in music composition, choreography, computer science, and creative writing, as well as their deep interest in performance art and philosophy. Together they have created numerous video and performance works which take as their starting point the materiality and temporality of the heart. With the use of stethoscopes and electrocardiograms they enliven sonic and haptic installations, and generate variable metronomes to introduce calculated unpredictability into the unfolding of live events. In addition to sensing the heart by way of technology, many of their performances and videos incorporate a dissected heart. Held between them, the flesh of the heart shapes the context of their shared touch, breath, and interaction, and invites questions related to mediation and representation of bodies in performance.

Recent performance works include III: Once Removed, III: Tangente, Synchronism, and Portraits, presented at venues in Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco, Phoenix, London, Hamburg, and Berlin. In addition, they have been awarded artist residencies at research centres such as IRCAM (Paris), Djerassi (California), CLOUD/Danslab (The Hague) and Lake Studios (Berlin). Since 2016 they have published a series of articles together in journals focussed on dance and somatics, music and composition, movement and computing, and performance philosophy, reflecting the trans-disciplinary breadth of their artistic and scholarly interests.

Teoma holds a PhD from the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) at Coventry University in the UK, and did her MFA at the Ohio State University, and her BFA at Concordia University in Montreal, all in dance/choreography. John did his PhD at UC Berkeley, his MM at McGill University in Montreal, and his BM at the University of the Pacific in California, all in music composition. They have each held a variety of research and teaching positions over the years in the US and Europe, and currently live in Berlin.

Evaluation methods and criteria

CREDIT WILL BE GIVEN FOR PARTICIPATION IN THE WORKSHOP.

Note

date of workshop: 8.11.2024

from 10 a.m. to 20 p.m. at dance department , room 1041,language: English

Further information

This course is an elective for all AMU students

Schedule for winter semester 2024/2025:

Schedule for summer semester 2024/2025:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

The subject is a part of the following study plans