Midnight Reflections about our own Northern Ventriloquist's Skills

Authors

Keywords:

posthumanism, performativity, transhuman, feedback, Global South

Abstract

“Midnight Reflections about our own Northern Ventriloquist's Skills” is articulated in the form of a podcast in a conversational style scripted by longtime collaborators composer and performer. It starts by cartographing the authors’ previous collaborative works until they approach their last project ensemble, Campo Amniótico [CA] (2021), work in which the feedback or Larsen plays a paramount role, making the artwork highly unstable and elusive. As a result, performers and composer are in constant trouble, stripped of their cognitive performativity by the once enhancer technology, that in CA becomes almost a threat.

That’s when the podcast starts to interact with recorded extracts of philosophers Rosi Braidotti and Achille Mbembe, and psychologist Thirusha Naidu on issues concerning posthumanism, postcolonialism and technological escalation. By applying and discussing their theories in the field of artistic research and, more specifically, in that of contemporary music, the authors will situate CA as a post-human artwork that aims to tip the balance more towards subversion than the status quo. That is following Eve Sedwick's precept, when she said twenty years ago with some disillusionment that the result of a work is usually always the same: a little subversive, a little hegemonic.

Author Biographies

Mauricio Carrasco, Artistic Director CRI création recherche interdisciplinarité

Dr Mauricio Carrasco (1973) is an artistic researcher interested in queer performativity, particularly in tracing performativity’s ‘queer lineage’ through a multiplicity of autoethnographic, posthuman and scientific rhizomatic approaches. He argues against the stranglehold of the specialism of artistic disciplines and aims to develop a transdisciplinary holistic vision that can accompany humans and non-humans in this critical historical convergence.

Carrasco's autoethnographic research examines the identity and corporeality of the classically trained musician in a repressive, dictatorial, and homophobic society (Chile in the 1980s and 1990s), which approaches trauma, hysteria, and gender issues in the musical theatre projects he performs. He assures the artistic direction of CRI création recherche interdisciplinarité and performs with the Ensemble Vortex.

Fernando Garnero, Lund University

Fernando Garnero (1976) is an Argentinian composer, co-director of Swiss ensemble Vortex, Guest Artist by Festival BIFEM (2019-2020), PhD candidate in Artistic Research by Lund University (Sweden) and former Fellow at the French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici (2020-21).

His works are played by Contrechamps, Vortex, Accroche Note, Phoenix, Proton, Repertorio Zero, Cairn, Lucilin, Distractfold, Wet Ink, L’imaginaire, Françoise Rivalland, Donatienne Michel-Dansac, on festivals such as Biennale de Venezia, Musica, Huddersfield, Archipel, Unerhoerte Musik Berlin, Mixtur, Warsaw Autumn and commissioned by Biennale de Venezia, Festival Archipel, SUISA, Fondation Mika Salabert, Fondation Royaumont, Radio France, French Ministry of Culture, Teatro Colón, among many others.

References

Attali, Jacques. 1985. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Braidotti, Rosi. 2015. “Posthuman, All Too Human? A Cultural Political Cartography.” Inhuman Symposium. Fridericianum YouTube Channel. Accessed May 15, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNJPR78DptA

Koltès, Bernard-Marie, Jeffrey Wainwright, and Actors Touring Company. 2001. In the Solitude of Cotton Fields. London: Methuen.

Mbembe, Achille. 2019. “Borders in the Age of Networks.” The New School You Tube Channel. Accessed May 15, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFGjzG0lLW8

Mignolo, Walter D. 2009. “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom.” Theory, Culture & Society 26: 159–181. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275

Naidu, Thirusha. 2021. “How Global South researchers talk to the north. What’s wrong with global health?” The Lancet YouTube Channel. Accessed January 3, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxU-sOX8H7U

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Published

30-06-2023