[-empyre-] Thanks to Kondition Pluriel and Company in Space for Networked Performance

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

-empyre- wishes to thank Marie-Claude, Martin, Hellen and John for the
chance to think about something that is very difficult to talk about online
-- or live, for that matter -- the mysterious qualities of embodiment and
the digital interface in live performance.  These qualities are of the heart
as much as of the mind, of the techne of spirit as well as of the electronic
'hand', our extensions into spaces.  Thanks for the meditative way you spoke
of these spaces, and their peculiar valience and ambiguities.  I was honored
to be able to do a live version of my new piece reddance/naxsmash at San
Francisco Performance Cinema Symposium a few days ago.  I bring this up only
because I resonate to Marie-Claude's thought about the why of continuing to
produce, or re-produce, these live pieces that go where they will, not in
full conscious control by the performer.  Each time I make a performance it
is a Fluxus like experience:  though technical apparatus and narrative and
media content may not vary greatly from one time to the next, each piece is
very dramatically different, and it is because of what Marie Claude is
calling the dive into the unknown, and the human connection: the audience
always brings as much or more to the situation as we do as performance
artists: their desires surge through the atmosphere of the space and inflect
that space in such a way that the artist responds very directly and in the
present moment.  A wave energy zooming around inside a network of a.i.,
media, human bodies and minds --a visible music.

To Marie-Claude is given the last word..........

 
I guess this is why we go for it, despite the
accounting absurdity, and we still make things
which are only existing in the present moment:
because it is somehow diving into the unknown,
because it feels very human and because it is in
the end very exciting...

With heartfelt thanks for tackling such a difficult topic during a month
when all of you have been deep into your performance practice...


CM/ with Melinda and Michael