Fine performance from Alistair Noon last night. He read one set, straight
through, just under an hour, showing the breadth and scale of his range from
unilinear verbal texts to what he called "pure sound poetry", with which he
ended. In all the work, there is a high degree of sound play / effects, with
some highly skilful use of rime.
It was all scripted andor scored poetry. While there will be inevitable
variation from performance to performance, I saw no sign of improvisation.
However, the work came over as fresh each time. He didn't clutter us with
explanations and commentaries though use of German and Russian words and
references were glossed. He paced himself, *looking at the audience, aware
of them / it, *looking at the texts and reading them even when it was clear
that he knew what was coming. Something of the air of a musician reading;
use of silence between and part of words and sound... Towards the end of the
reading, voiced silence - vocal gestures that unexpectedly produced no
sound. Clicks of fingers, non-English phonemes using tongue and teeth and so
on, tied together or tied up with a single word in the midst of non-lexical
utterance, pleasantly shocking by the word's unexpectedness there in an
environment he had created in a second or two by the tightness of his
performance. Steady decline of the heap of paper on the right as each page
was turned over on to the heap of paper on the left, the music stand
shuddering slightly, the order of the evening predetermined - though at
almost every page turn he paused briefly as if reconsidering... Some pages
took minutes and minutes to be read, others were done in seconds.
Those who have read his statement and examples in WORD SCORE UTTERANCE
CHOREOGRAPHY will be aware of his (successful) experiments in creating sets
of symbols for sounds and vocal gestures where the written language has
limited capability. The application of this work was demonstrated last night
with considerable virtuosity; and it was lovely to *see the scores performed
where previously one had relied upon his tape "earances"...
SVP 1999 #7 contains a considerable selection of work - available at £1.00 /
£1.50 incl in UK payable to Lawrence Upton sterling only - talk to me if you
live elsewhere and want it... also includes AU GOM@ Newsletter # 3 re
Jugoslavia and review of the new publication by Presley / James from Form
Next SVP is 4th May. Messrs Brenton and Hardingham
btw The Three Cups has been / is being decorated & it's quite jolly now
L
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"Voluntary and subliminal censorship is a taboo subject in free societies.
One of the most effective functions of "communicators" in the Western media
is to minimise the culpability of established power in war, terrorism and
the repression of human rights by repetition of received truths and omission
on a grand scale." John Pilger
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