I went to see the experimental music performance "Some Cats From Japan" at The Kitchen in Chelsea.
The show featured Fuyuki Yamakawa, Kanta Horio and Atsuhiro Ito, joined on the 28/09/07 performance by C. Spencer Yeh.
Yamakawa uses his body to put on a very dramatic musical performance, based on the technique of throat-singing, and using a number of strategically placed microphones and sensors. Horio sets up miniature performances using tiny magnets and metallic objects, scaled up by the use of video cameras and contact mikes. Ito and Yeh played noise music using violin, sampler, and Ito's own flourescent-tube based instrument.
I'll describe and review of each of the individual performances, then comment on the overall event.
Fuyuki Yamakawa's performance was by far the most dramatic of the three, due to the way he makes his physical presence so much a part of the performance.
He starts with a bang: sets up his microphones, shrugs off his jacket and throws it on the stage. Everyone turns to watch it. As it lands, he stomps on one of his effect pedals and howls. The audience is shocked, and riveted.
He is a trained "Khoomei" singer, a Mongolian technique where the performer sings two notes at once, through throat and nasal cavity. Yamakawa makes the most of this by attaching a contact microphone to the side of his nose, as well as using two stage mikes. In addition to the sung chords, the mikes pick up his breathing, which he modulates by panting and inhaling. By turning his head into a resonator, he is able to accompany himself with percussive sounds by tapping his fingers on his forehead. The sound is dense, complex, tribal and visceral.
The lights dim, all you can hear is his amplified breath, sounding like wind blowing over a steppe. The thudding of a heartbeat becomes audible, and with every beat, the performer is lit up by a cluster of incandescent lightbulbs on a stand. He has stripped off his shirt, and it is clear that he has attached a sensor to his chest. Through breath control and movement, he is able to modulate his heartbeat, creating a mysterious and overwhelming drumbeat. The audience can only see him intermittently - you can only see him when his heart beats and lights puse on.
He picks up a guitar, as if it is unfamiliar to him, and rubs it on his body, swings it in the air, offers it up to the guitar amp creating a feedback howl. The exertion modulates his heartbeat, which continues to pound in the background, pulsing the lights on and off.
He ends by returning to his throat singing from the beginning, gradually calming himself and slowing down his heartbeat.
Yamakawa has stated that his goal is to make the entire venue an extension of his body, while performing. By using his heartbeat to regulate what the audience can see and hear, he creates a powerful, intimate, emotional space reminiscent of a shamanic ceremony.
Kanta Horio is more restrained. He has set up a little table with a camera and microphone suspended over it, all connected to a computer. He is off to the side of the stage. A screen fills the stage, showing what seems to be a close up of the surface of the little table. This is confirmed when Horio's (giant) finger enters the frame, dropping a tiny horse-shoe shaped magnet onto the table top.
By manipulating some controls, he is able to get the little magnet to stand up and twitch around. A microphone is placed close to the magnet, and the sound of it scrabbling around is massively amplified. He adds more tiny magnets, little balls, washers, etc and sets them oscillating around each other.
His attitude is like that of a bemused child watching ants - his attention is riveted on the tabletop, and he crouches down to poke at the little twitching objects. It makes an interesting contrast to the projection screen, where the tiny little magnets are blown up to the size of a person!
Eventually, three little rod-shaped magnets are on the table, upright and twitching, generating a scratchy rhythmic sound. They start to move away from the camera, and when they are almost out of frame, the camera starts moving automatically to follow them. (It is a tiny wireless camera, mounted on a little boom.) The magnets twitch and skitter on their endless circular pilgrimage, as every once in a while Horio's finger enters the scene to knock them over, remove or replace different shaped objects.
Finally he removes all the various magnets until only the horseshoe magnet from the beginning is left, and he dims the light over the table.
I tried to pay special attention to Horio himself during the performance - it is clear that he is aware that he is onstage, and is actively "performing", not just operating the little table and the magnets. His persona is that of a curious schoolboy torturing beetles - it is easy to project a narrative unto the little struggling magnets, how they move and twitch and are casually knocked down by an enormous finger. At the same time, Horio manages to embody the curiosity of the audience - we can't see clearly what is happening on the tiny table (a miniature stage) and, like him, crane forward to see what is going on.
Finally, Atsuhiro Ito and C. Spencer Yeh perform. Yeh is playing a violin, with brusque circular motions, creating an uncomfortable, violent, scratching sound. Ito is holding a flourescent tube, perhaps 4-5 feet long, seated. After Yeh builds to a crescendo, Ito's tube flares into life, accompanied by a sharp burst of guitar-like sound. This is the Optron, an instrument he's created. By playing with the controls, he is able to make the tube flicker, creating rhythmic percussive sounds. On the darkened stage, the flashes of the tube are violent and resemble lightning. Through all this, Yeh's playing is becoming increasingly frantic and violent.
Yeh switches over to a sampler, recording himself making a series of sucking and whimpering noises, which he then loops and layers, creating a dense auditory collage. Throughout this, Ito is continuing to make sounds, veering between electric guitar-like feedback howls, and sharp percussive sound bursts.
Yeh returns to the violin, him and Ito play in counterpoint for a while, then build to a crescendo and stop.
In some ways, this was the most conventionally "musical" of the three performances: two players, two instruments, an overall structure to the performance indicated by variations in tempo and intensity.
All three of the performances had a number of points in common:
Amplification: All three relied on electronic amplification to make the performance work. In the case of Yamakawa and Horio, amplification made it possible for the audience to hear (and be immersed in) sounds that would otherwise be undetectable, eg. the perfomer's breath, the twitching and scratching of tiny magnets. It suggests the power of amplification alone as an interesting transformative technique.
Light and sound: All three had an auditory and a visual component - the performance is incomplete without both. In particular, Yamakawa and Ito used light integrated with sound as a key element of their performance. Yamakawa's heartbeat directly triggered the lights that let us see him; Ito's instrument had to light up in order to produce sound. Horio's miniature magnet drama requires the projection of the view from the camera in order to allow us to really become engaged in what is happening.
Structure (Beginnings and endings): All the performers had a clear structure to their performance, marking out the ending (and letting the audience know when to applaud). Yamakawa and Horio used a circular structure, reprising the initial part of their performance and gradually fading out. (I think this is known as a "feminine" ending.) Yeh and Ito did something similar, returning to similar tempo and instrumentation, but building to a crescendo. I imagine this is a problem in experimental performance - since it explores new forms, signalling the start and end of the performance is particularly important, since traditional cues to the audience may be missing. I thought Yamakawa's start (throwing the coat, howling) was particularly good, grabbing the audience's attention and unambiguously saying "this is it!"
Of the three, I was most struck by Yamakawa's performance. By making himself and his body the center of attention, and by immersing the audience in his voice, breath and heartbeat, he achieved a kind of emotional intensity and intimacy which was absent in the latter two pieces. Sonically, the piece was intense, engaging and unmistakably human.
Horio's piece was intriguing technically (how does he make the magnets dance?), interesting to look at, but not so interesting sonically. It was interesting to see how you could project a narrative onto the actions of the little metal pieces. (Reminiscent of the minimal narrative assignment.) It was interesting how he played his onstage role as an "avatar" of the audience, leaning in to see what we could see on the big screen.
Yeh and Ito were the most "conventional", and in that sense, least interesting. Their performance gave the least opportunity for the audience to identify with them, and they did very little other than play their instruments. Theirs was the only performance that could be appreciated with eyes closed. (Ito's instrument is bright enough that you can still sense the flashes...)
Overall, the evening was an interesting showcase for three very different performers.
