Notes from The Killing Machine
'Sometimes you fall into a story, but sometimes you have to take steps to unravel it' Janet Cardiff, Munster Walk I (1997)
destroy concept of 'white cube', expansion of language and 'behaviou
rs' of art, Eye & Spectator: joined by the human body, yet distinguished from one another by the different functions they perform (p13)
'Theatre is a type of agency. The agency if extremely unequal material components
and ideals which only exist in the performance. These components ( a text, a venue, bodies, voices, costumes, lights, an audience...) come together in an event- the performance - whose repetition night after night in no way hinders it from always remaining the same as the event, that is to say, unique' (p13) Alain Badious (French philosopher)
Cardiff crossroads of film and theatre, extremes of a single problem or paradox: first the event performed before us (film) under the conditions of ritual and architectual separations; and secondly, the unique, unrepeatable performance (theatre), put on just for us, spectators cum actors, when the play begins (p13)
sensory experience, explores pyhsical perceptiona and the transformation of individ
uals through the experience of art, exploit sound, voice: can be used to create virtual characters and forge relationships with the audience, installations 'situations', binaural and surround sound: physical experience, hyperrealistic qualities, physical presence, "soundtrack", Walkbook, 'experience in all dimensions, hallucination, hypnosis, audience's intimate relationship to the virtual voice, relationship between o
bject (narration) and space (performance), installation of sound eg television, radio, speakers, headphones, resemble cinematographic micro-experiments inspired by both avant garde film and more popular formulas of film noir and B movies,
wavers between love and hate, wooden structure, ritual, film soundtrack, interferences in and outside, familiarity, entertainment, escapism, illusion of space and grandeur, imagination, headphones, expectations anticipated, audience soundtrack, full body experience, confusion, intimacy,
Roland Barthes ' Like a bad concert hall, affective space contains dead spots where the sound fails to circulate. The perfect interlocutor, the friend, is he not the one who constructs around you the greatest possible romance? Cannot friendship be defined as a space with total sonority'
I was able to experience a work by Cardiff & Miller on an art visit to Barcelona, where I experience two works, Playhouse & Killing Machine. These works have stuck with me, unable to shift the complete sensory take over. Sat watching playhouse I was alone, me and the stage, me and the headphones, I was shattered into an illusion as the woman sang a build of tension was taking place in my ears. Asked in a hesitant voice to take the suitcase under my seat (at which point I went to look under my seat) I was transported into Cardiff's world in which she was controlling my emotional connection to the work and causing me to react in a rather unsettling an awkward fashion. I'm sure I'll have to say later on, but I thought it best to simple down the basics of Cardiff's work and work through my connections to her sensory experiences.
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