Re: [-empyre-] Bare Life, Ghost Detainees, Exclusion and Performance

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

GH writes,

> In 2000-2001 Peter Sinclair and I developed an immersive,  
> interactive laser and 3D sound art work called Shooter, <http:// 
> nujus.net/shooter-new-site/index-1.html> the piece allowed the  
> viewer to walk into a darkened room laced with red lasers. Passing  
> through a laser triggered sounds that were fed to the 3D sound  
> space.  The sounds included, firearms, guns, explosion, video  
> arcade sounds and xenophobic rants.  The piece was about Bush’s  
> buildup to war and video games.  When a person walked into the room  
> they became the target.

GH,   Does the person's image appear on a screen (web cam?)also  
(llike a mirroring?)   Staged with that representation of the  
target   you could make a 'reality tv' display--like on overhead  
monitors similar to those used in hospitals, casinos, etc.
> For our next collaborative piece we did a performance work called,  
> Rant/ Rant Back/ Back Rant;
> “Peter Sinclair created a special interface to sample voice input,  
> manipulate it and send it back into the general audio mix in real  
> time. GH projects the ramblings of a borderline schizoid  
> personality type who can't tell the difference between media news  
> information, gossip and paranoid rumors. The piece is a techno  
> driven word or poetry jam that resembles the ranting of a  
> delusional street person. GH prepared the content by clipping news  
> articles and posting them on a web in a blog called rantblog PTP  
> (power to the people).”
> > http://nujus.net/gh_04/gallery9.html


In this piece the rambling of your voice is repetitively resampled  
and looped (in max/msp?)   and reiterated , especially in the repeat  
'second coming, second
coming...'

can you comment on the disassociation, the schizoid speech?  is it  
the voice of the 'state of exception' , what you call
> the global media-logos for my rant performances I was struck by its  
> manipulative and emotive power. Such phrases as, ghost detainees  
> and extreme rendition were chillingly concise.
?

by giving voice to the 'state of exception', ie mimicking the global  
media-logos, you interpret or translate the hysteria by setting it  
apart.  This brings to mind a scene from Vittorio de Seta's Diario di  
un Maestro (A Schoolmaster's Diary of 173.  Young street kids in  
school listen to the radio tapes of Mussolini announcing the state of  
war from the Piazza di Populo in Rome.  Their fathers had all fought  
in the war, their families had all starved.  The delay was an  
interesting cinematic device.

In your new media mode you make a work that gives that same delay  
(via the resampling + looping) -- you effect a distancing on the  
schizoid rhetoric in the middle of the war.  We don't have to wait  
till it's over when sifting among the ruins of our cities we hear the  
horror of the totalitarian babble.   Instead the ruins are now we are  
in them as we hear the rantapod.




-cm