weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 18
“In essence it is a quest to gain space and time.”
Margaret Cameron14
Experience – voice workshop 1#:
I was on a quest for space and time and ultimately
freedom from something I couldn’t name, but it was
incredibly important. It became ME. I returned from the
talk with Rosenbach, deeply sunken into the pudding of
the unknown, scared but determined to find something.
I sat in front of the video camera and filmed my face,
opening and closing my eyes. I was silent, but there was
a desperate voice behind the quiet face.
“…All the other participants are singing to the
harmonies of the piano; while my throat is tight. I can’t
make a sound. I feel paralyzed. ‘These harmonies are
disgusting’ I think, ‘these false chants, as if there were
harmony where there is none’.
“[…] a blink is a curtain with a stage on
both sides.”
Margaret Cameron
“[…] a blink is a curtain with a stage on both sides.”
Margaret Cameron15
Rosenbach challenged us with the question, what if
your (generations) reason for art is inside yourself again.
We (her generation) had to fight the establishment,
break the rules and be innovative, but your generation
has all the information available and everything has
already been done. You need to look inside. So we
looked inside: self-experience, emotions, movement,
experiments with visiting artist Ulay…
It became something I had to find inside of me. The
path of getting a glimpse of it, losing it as soon as I
had a sense of finding it, was painful. It was never in the
final result. It showed up in the studio, sometimes in
performance, but never when I tried it.
Next Caramel: I produced a video, which I thought was
very close to it, and showed it to Ritsaert ten Cate, when
I was a lucky guest student of DasArts Amsterdam for
one term.
“The sounds that we make are the audible
manifestation of our various ‘states
of being,’ and are the symptom of our
emotional and historical identity.”
Richard Armstrong33
It reminds me of my childhood in church, where all the
people sang together sanctimoniously, and they would
talk poorly about each other afterwards. ‘I thought this
was a voice workshop, not a singing workshop. I don’t
give a shit about singing!’ it rings in my head. I stand
frozen in space while others move about singing.
The teacher: ‘And whatever you do, be engaged
physically.’ ‘Engaged physically?’ rumbles my head. ‘I
can’t stand this music and I certainly can’t stand these
voices and then I’m supposed to move to it?’ It is
unbearable. ‘If you stand there like you’re rooted to the
spot, it won’t do you any good. Go into motion and see
what happens.’ My heart races and I start to jump, a wild
stomping dance, that doesn’t fit into the atmosphere
at all. It’s hard for me to dance out of line and I’m
embarrassed, too, but I can’t help it. I dance, bouncing,
stomping, snorting, breathing heavily.
And whatever it is, let it come into your voice’ I hear
the teacher from far away. I try to stay with it and open
my mouth and gurgling, broken, bruised sounds are
coming out of my throat. It does me good to hear
them. ‘Yes, I’m angry and I’m not putting up with all this
sanctimonious harmony’ I growl inwardly.
14 Ibid. .
14
15 Ibid. .p. 39.
33 Armstrong, R. – paraphrased from memory by Walli Hö昀椀nger.
15 Ibid. p. 39.
33 Armstrong, R. – paraphrased from memory by Walli Hö昀椀nger.
34
35
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