Deutsch weiter unten!

dear all, 

As you know, a group of us spent a week from the end of October to the beginning of November at the Roy Hart Center in Malérargues to work together on vocal ecotism's topics and, in particular, to continue the questions of the artistic actions. 

I don't feel able to give a detailed report, but I do want to make a few comments.

We had a good and intensive week. In the mornings we concentrated on practice and the theory of vocal elements, and in the afternoons we used the time to work on the questions and projects that the participants had brought with them. We also tried out a kind of choral piece called ‘Elementenkunde’ (study of the elements) with vocal material taken from various sources: descriptions of, so to speak, elementary sound events, vocal interventions that refer to these sound events, excerpts from songs that address the elements, and whatever else came up. This is an idea that we can continue to work with well in groups. 

On Wednesday evening, I gave a lecture in which I wanted to provide an insight into the research of the past months, especially into the reflections. I only touched on the practical work and at the end I presented the principles of a vocal art for the wounded world. 

The video recording of it can be found here:

https://vimeo.com/1030448145

A few additions:

In the lecture, I talk at some length about Philippe Descola's book: Beyond Nature and Culture. On arte.tv, there is still a very good interview with him to see and hear, which I can recommend to get an impression of him and his thinking.

I am not talking about Bruno Latour, although his work on the questions that interest us is extremely important and helpful. In many ways, he is obviously completely on our side. The only exception is the absence of art in his thinking – or in what I know of it. For him, art does not seem to belong to the ‘modes of existence’, which all have their own conception of truth. Well, we can talk about that. There are also two long conversations with him on Arte.tv, which he conducted shortly before his death. Also highly recommended! (Thanks to Maria Gorius for the tip!!)

You can find the interviews by entering the respective names in the search bar.

Meanwhile, during a visit from my voice teacher Clara Silber, I learned that she and Paul had already designed a workshop that worked with the four elements. This must have been before my time with them, but it shows how much the broadening of our horizons in vocal work has long been pushing in the direction of the so-called non-human world. In addition, in the early 1990s, shortly before the Rio Earth Summit, the two of them designed a board game called ‘Eco-logique’ and even presented it to some UN agencies in Geneva. Unfortunately, nothing resulted from it.