Bob Cobbing at The Klinker Thursday, 29 April 1999
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I was told afterwards by part of the audience, a contingent from the series
formerly known as Vertical Images, that this was the best Cobbing
performance they had ever seen... So I shall tell you about it.
It was billed as "Bob Cobbing, solo", but he interpreted that as not
Birdyak, not Domestic Ambient Buoys. He performed for about half an hour,
divided into three performances, each approximately ten minutes long,
running into each other. The texts were projected on to white cloth across
the back of the performance area and were read from there.
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It started with a game on the word "solo", performed by Cobbing and Upton,
a piece of some vintage, included (if my memory is correct) in BILL JUBOBE:
SELECTED TEXTS OF BOB COBBING 1942 - 1975 (selected by Cobbing and bpNichol,
Coach House Press, Toronto, 1976). It opens with a play on the word "solo",
doubling it as "oslo" and breaking both words into alphabetical rather than
phonemic fragments - "sol", "los", "o", "os", "so" - playing combinations of
the fragments against each other. The next three pages are visual variations
on the opening page, enlargements, overlays, fragmentations. The first page
is columnar and orderly but we went beyond the notational indications from
the beginning, overlaying and repeating the utterance elements
improvisationally, responding to each other as much as to the text. This was
reinforced and encouraged by Jennifer Pike, personing the slide projector,
as she, responding I imagine to our departures, changed the focus of the
projector with considerable ingenuity, producing a d.i.y. movie of
variations which I would be very happy to have produced by any means. Bob
and I followed; Jennifer followed Bob and me. She did the same with the
other three pages of the text. I wish I could give a sense of what it was
like in addition to saying the details of what we did; I think we did well!
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Then I got out of it while Bob did a solo with a series of images called,
according to the note he sent me at the beginning of the week, "game and
set". I should have said that during the first section I stood alone - as
usual we didn't use amplification - in the middle of the large room while
Bob stood behind the (unused) bar - where he stayed throughout the
performance so that during the second section, unless they craned their
necks, the audience had only the images to watch.
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>From the end of the first section, Bob did not use his voice! Game and set -
& again I am working from memory - is images built up of asymmetric blobs
spread asymmetrically across the field of the image. "Blob" might seem a
pejorative term, but I don't mean it like that. These are visually
interesting and pleasing images. Bob realised the texts by drumming,
drumming largely on things which are not or were not until then drums.
Arhythmical drumming and manic regular tin drum kind of drumming switching
between the two rapidly. Barmy drumming. And it worked beautifully. Half way
through a barperson came in and went between the tables collecting beer
glasses which went chink - chink-chink - chink - chink - chink-chink-chink
over and into and with Bob's drumming as she built a stack of glass which
scintillated as she carried it through the light of the projector.
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At the end of which I took over the slide projector; and Jennifer donned a
white mask, which stared softly glaring atop her black clothing, and moved
to the texts, which are striking thick vertical rather than horizontal black
streaks and written text fragments struck in among the streaks, which I have
seen but do not have a name for - and to Bob's sound realisation of the
texts and her movement which he performed with a various and disparate
series of whistles, close up to the projection cloth, her hands fluttering
through the black and white (the lights were right down so nothing much
could be seen away from the images) to birdlike - if you're not a bird -
sounds; and she disappeared behind the screen and came back draped in and
covered by a white cloth so that she became a part of the fluttering
projection screen as Bob's sounding became less and less apparently
representational, more and more as fragmentary and staccato as his texts...
and moving the cloth away from herself and back she, or the space she
created in the whitenesses by doing so, reappeared. She's a great mover. I
wish I could do it. See me on my zimmer frame in my late seventies.
So that's it. I may not have gained any converts with such a description,
perhaps confirmed a few doubts; but for the enthusiasts I think a bit of new
ground was broken.
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For those who might be persuaded to come to the workshop - next one Saturday
3.30 p m Victoria pub at Mornington Crescent - most of the basics were
worked out at the last workshop, particularly the idea of having the score /
text projected... not a new idea for any of us but something we hadn't done
for a while. We had quite a long discussion about the effect of how one
"held" the text - in your hand as Bob likes, on the floor as I like or on a
music stand - upon the manner of interpretation. The idea of moving in the
image developed, some of you will remember, at our brief interventions in
cris cheek's contribution to the Third Sub Voicive Colloquium last January.
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Enough already. Time to top up the compost heap.
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.
L

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