In 2000 I moved to New York City and was constantly on the bus/train between Toronto and NYC. Once as I dragged myself into line for this very early train at Union Station some guy saw me standing there and asked, “is this the line for New York?” and I sullenly replied “I.. don’t know”. He replied “you should keep in touch with yourself”.
I’m reminded of this comment when I realize that I’m still writing day 3 of my Hermann Nitsch experience last summer and I already went back to Prizendorf and did another performance. I thought it was worth taking my time touching up my journal entries and serializing them, as the experience did lead to some real epiphanies that I think are worth sharing. But now I feel like I’m just out of touch with, well, me.
To sum up, working on Hermann Nitsch’s action art brings in to focus so many of the realities which undergird my life and I choose to ignore. I think the work is powerful because it invites me to confront these realities, which should be the subject of the highest forms of spiritual ritual (our relationships with other living things, and the way we treat each other). I’ll complete last summer’s journal, and a new one about this year as soon as I can.
Last weekend I was in Amsterdam for the Orgelpark Symposium. The Orgelpark is a private foundation which supports new pipe organ technology, and they operate a lab which is a converted church containing 9 pipe organs, including one of the most technically advanced in the world. It’s possible to control the wind pressure of individual ranks, and tune individual notes, so one could in theory have every key on the keyboard play the same note, or have every key play a different sound (trumpet, flute, etc.) Their annual symposium is a heavy drip of academic research, new performance possibilities, cultural theory and building technology. Throughout the year they present the organ in new contexts with the aim of it reaching a wider public.
I was invited to present and it was never agreed what my presentation would be about. When I picked up the program it was listed as “Podcasting the Organ”. So for the next two days I wrote a presentation to fit this title. Read it here.
Or just enjoy some photos of the Orgelpark and the other fabulous presenters.
The Orgelpark! L to R: Van Straten reconstruction of a 1479 Gerritz organ, Utrecht; the 1922 Sauer organ; and the Utopa Baroque organ, a hybrid marvel which can be an authentic baroque instrument or a modern high-tech marvel
Video: computer-musician Marion Wörle and composer Maciej Śledziecki of Gamut, Inc., explain the use of a standing wave generated by a loudspeaker inside an organ pipe, and the 2013 project “Avant-Avant Garde” presented at Berghain in Berlin (1min28sec)
Video: computer-musician Marion Wörle and composer Maciej Śledziecki of Gamut, Inc., demonstrate the incredible sounds of the MIDI-controlled Utopa Organ (43sec)
Video: excerpt of a performance by Kimberly Marshall at Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (14sec)
