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Luke Martin and LCollective «PRACTICES IN THE IMAGINARY: EACH DAY I MUST THINK OF 20, 50 PEOPLE » Across eight weeks in the autumn and
winter of 2020-2021, a group of friends—separated from one another as a
result of the pandemic—performed a simple, shared activity. Using Luke
Martin’s elegant score as a guide, Doug Farrand, Assaf Gidron, Rachel
Mangold, Teodora Stepančić, and Martin each made concise lists of
those individuals—whether living or dead, real or imaginary—with whom they
found themselves conversing in their heads. They jotted down names, fragments
of memories, locations, and dates. Once each week, they recorded themselves
reading the accumulated texts aloud or silently, arranging the lists, and
writing new ones. At each new iteration, options were given for reading the
lists, making a sustained sound, or remaining silent for each previously
completed page. The lists were photographed, and each week’s recordings were
subsequently layered to create a palimpsest of voices, silences, memories,
and distances. The patient unfolding of these recordings reveals surprising
and often beautiful juxtapositions as networks of overlapping influences, mutual
friendships, and shared solitudes are delicately traced. This release includes a book presenting
images of each of the lists, the score by Luke Martin that guided the
process, and a download code to access the recordings for each of the eight
weeks. This is
Suppedaneum no. 26. What would happen if I paid attention to the
multiplicity of people, memories, places, and so on, streaming through my
head at any moment, underneath every word, every decision, every step? What
if I did it with a group of friends (which somehow makes more sense than
alone)? This was the initial question that prompted writing the piece we have
here. The swarm, how to listen to the swarming. Of course, the swarming
descends infinitely: multiples within multiples within multiples. How do you,
then, decide what comes out of the swarm? Without losing the obvious and
beautiful fact that it is undecidable, that it is inconsistent: what is? The
piece is not so much about who or what is remembered, written, or said, but
rather the ethics of being seized by and seizing a decision, the articulation
of a time and history which is unjustifiable and not-one. In other words, the
making of a mark, a sound, a silence. Did something arise in this practice—we
do not know with certainty—that could only be 'named' without content, a
discontinuity somehow testified to without reduction (whether in sound,
silence, or speech)? Could it only happen by way of a coincidence of multiple
articulations, a collective and contingent moment within the group both in
witness to and sustaining that 'thing' which could not be captured, that
thing somewhere wandering and winding through our sound, silence, and speech?
If it doesn't obscure it, the swarming may reveal, without reason, a glimpse
of this strange wound, the flickering presence of an inconsistent scar; and
only as strangers—that is, as friends: those who sustain and care for their
mutual strangeness, their richness—can we give it welcome. —Luke
Martin Douglas Farrand is a composer, musician,
and educator concerned with developing practices that invite us to explore
our myriad processes of listening and embody a collective investigation of place
and connection. He works with the University of Orange, a community
organization and free people's urbanism school in Orange NJ, as a community
organizer and co-director of their Music City program.
Assaf Gidron is a composer, musician
and sound designer. Originally from Tel Aviv, Assaf lived in the UK and the
Netherlands before moving to Brooklyn where he writes and performs music,
works in film sound, runs the Big Family Audio Co. studio and uploads images
to the @moreshapes Instagram page.
Rachel Mangold is a collaborative and
experimental double bassist living in Brooklyn, New York. With a practice
rooted in inquiry and a commitment to cultural impression, she is weaving the
threads of performance and participatory work into a holistic practice.
Luke Martin is an experimental
composer, performer, and writer living in Minneapolis, MN. He plays guitar
and no-input mixing board, often with people in and around the Wandelweiser
Group, and is part of the ensemble Ordinary Affects. Luke's work is mainly oriented
toward thinking the relation between music and truth, with a special focus on
theorizing silence as such. He also runs, with Aaron Foster Breilyn, the
Co-Incidence Festival.
Teodora Stepančić is a
composer, pianist and curator, founder of Piano+, Shared Space and 597
concert series in Brooklyn, part of Teo Dora An Drea duo (Montreal/New York),
Stepančić.Gidron duo and core member of Netherlands based ensemble
Modelo62.
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