Bent Frequency presents
The Music of Jennifer Walshe
| Monday, Dec. 5th, 2011, 7:30pm | GSU Kopleff Recital Hall |
Tickets for this event are $5 for students, $12 for adults, or $10 with advance purchase. Group rates are available. The performance is free for GSU students. Click here to order tickets now.
 |
funded in part by Culture Ireland as part of Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland’s year of Irish arts in America.
Funding for this program is provided by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners under the guidance of the Fulton County Arts Council.
Atlanta_2089________________________world premiere |
Performing on this concert include:
| Jennifer Walshe | vocals |
|---|---|
| Jan Baker | saxophone |
| Stuart Gerber | percussion |
| Caleb Herron | percussion |
| Sarah Kapps | cello |
| Peter Marshall | piano |
| Tae Hong Park | sound engineer |
| Amanda Pepping | trumpet |
| David Smart | guitar |
| Wanda Yang Temko | vocals |
Atlanta 2089
Of all the cities of the world, Atlanta was the one most transformed by the events of the second half of the 21st century.
Hurled into the northernmost latitudes by the catastrophic polar shift of 2073, the city found itself encased in snow and ice, bathed permanently in the lights of the Aurora Borealis.
As millions evacuated to Africa, Atlanta became the domain of CNNDeltCola. The city became a research installation, inhabited by the world’s most elite scientific minds. Hybrid neural networks now lined the banks of the Chattahoochee. Liquid crystal quantum processors evolved in the cryogenic temperatures of Stone Mountain.
Cut off from the rest of the world in the frigid wastes of the farthest north, the scientists of CNNDeltCola were free to pursue experimentation at the farthest fringes of science. They pioneered work in hard artificial intelligence, developed self-replicating nanobots, proved the existence of dark matter. Each announcement of a discovery was a cause for wonder and celebration around the globe. Their contributions to the development of humanity were profound and far-reaching.
As the years passed, however, the extreme isolation of the situation began to take its toll. Locked away in the exquisite loneliness of the far north, the scientists’ research became increasingly bizarre, their announcements more and more erratic. Gradually it emerged that the scientists of Atlanta had come to believe that the answers to the universe’s most profound questions were to be found in the pop cultural detritus of the 20th century.
The scientists saw the pop culture of this time as the expression of a universal mind, the product of interactions between vast numbers of morphic fields; a pathway to an infinitely-expanding consciousness. Experiments investigated the ability of the kill screens of 1980s videogames to open portals in the fabric of space and time; the effect of kung fu movies on quantum phase spaces; how internet memes might be used to become immortal.
In 2091 the Atlanta CNNDeltCola Installation went into self-imposed quarantine and cut off all communications with the outside world. When extraction teams from the Pan-Continental Reaction Force stormed the Installation, they found no traces of human life ever having existed there.
for piano (with organ, radio, marker and pad of paper), voice (with headphones), trumpet in B-flat, trombone (with laptop), cello (with teddy bear, two large stones and headphones), guitar (with electric guitar, Lego, radio, ukelele, banjo and headphones), percussion 1 (with Tibetan singing bowl, knife, two apples, typewriter, herb plants, chopping board, electric kettle, headphones, two shakers, cane, camera and newspaper), percussion 2 (with pistachios, two bowls, a piece of knitting, typewriter, string, lemons, limes, oranges, zester, water sprays, playing cards, headphones, drumsticks, water bottle, pencils, cane, camera, apple and newspaper) and DVD.
XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!
__
Notes from the composer:
XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!! is a music theatre piece in the marionette opera tradition. In this case, the marionettes are fashion dolls of the Barbie or Sindy type and their “theatre” is a large doll house. The doll house stands at the center of the stage. Two puppeteers work in and around the doll house to manipulate the dolls through their story. Two camera operators are positioned behind the puppeteers and film the action; their images are projected onto two large screens. The musicians are scattered on the stage, surrounding the house. Two singers – dressed as Barbie dolls - cover all the vocal parts.
Fashion dolls – the most ubiquitous of which is Mattel’s Barbie - have been the focus of much cultural interest and critique by a wide variety of commentators, from academics, journalists and social theorists to writers, artists and film-makers. Most people tend to be highly polarized in their attitude toward these dolls – Barbie is typically abhorred by critics because of her rampant materialism and physically unattainable figure, roundly scorned because of the effect her plastic physique may have on impressionable young girls as they grow up in a culture fixated on physical beauty.
At the same time, Barbie is lauded by her fans as being a potentially empowering role model for young girls - in her time she has had many careers, from school teacher to rock star to astronaut, and her most recent consumer incarnation is tending to the offspring of her friends as a pediatrician. Her possessions and achievements far outstrip those of her boyfriend Ken – even in advertisements, when Barbie and Ken go for a drive in one of her many cars, she is always behind the wheel.
A great deal of these attacks on or defenses of Barbie project her supposedly negative/positive effects onto girls and women, yet very little literature exists on how she is played with, what roles she takes, and the storylines and events which commonly befall her. When little girls play with dolls, it is traditionally viewed as an innocuous, passive, feminine act, bereft of the violence their brothers enact in their play with guns and cars. However, in my experience, the play is generally anything but innocuous and passive.
In working on this piece, I interviewed many girls and women and collected the storylines that they played out with these dolls. In these storylines, sex and violence are both explicit and commonplace - Barbie regularly meets a terrible and painful end, either dying at the hands of another doll or the girl playing with her (as well as at the hands of many a sadistic brother or sister); through torturing, fighting or accident she often sustains horrible injuries, which may become complicated because “the doctors think she is lying and won’t treat her”; she may become pregnant “without knowing it” and leave the baby to die on the kitchen table after she gives birth because “she wants to go dancing”; she will embrace, fondle and sleep with one or more of the other dolls, often at the same time, by force if needs be; she will marry another female doll or an animal if no men are available to her; if she does manage to successfully wed a male, the police may come and “kill him because he is drunk.”
Her extensive wardrobe and long hair are styled to great effect – in addition to her elaborate wedding outfits and chic fashion ensembles, she may be in drag, achieved by simply tying her hair back or donning a trouser suit; she may take the form of a religious icon such as the Virgin Mary; she may have her head pulled off, fingers cut off, limbs removed, or her body emblazoned with ink genitals and nipples.
In short, many girls take Barbie and use her to their own ends – she serves as a safe vehicle for their imagination. She role-plays scenarios and explores ideas and emotions they may not understand or have any direct experience of. Barbie is a blank plastic canvas with a perma-smile onto which little girls can project many different things, from the innocent to the unsettling. In the end, value judgments about Barbie become irrelevant; what is more important is how she functions as a toy, how she is manipulated by the children who play with her, how she is used as a lens through which human experience is viewed.
The libretto of XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!! takes the thesis of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata as a jumping-off point, following three women and their boyfriends through a tragic narrative. The libretto underpins the structure of the opera – the puppeteers manipulate the dolls through the story word-for-word, as if in a play.
The music co-exists with the flow of the libretto and actions of the dolls, whether by making concrete contact with the words of the text, or providing extra-textual layers of meaning. The singers do not function like traditional opera singers – their identity is fluid, and they may portray one or more characters or none at all; they sing, shout, speak, breathe and whisper the text, and they make textless sounds. The musicians also switch modes throughout the piece, vocalizing in addition to playing their instruments, commenting on the narrative as they understand it and making physical gestures. The apparatus of the piece is laid bare in visual terms and musical terms– the dolls, puppeteers, camera operators, singers and musicians are clearly visible on the stage. Each audience member’s understanding of the piece is ultimately a negotiation of the interaction between all the different elements.
About Jennifer Walshe:
Foundation for Contemporary Arts
Funding for this program is provided by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners
under the guidance of the Fulton County Arts Council.