Merida – June 3, 2009.

Jackie and I met Nadia Escalante for the first last night to start discussing what I’m calling our triad project. We had a couple hours of chatting about our personal work, our aesthetics and ideas about what we’re working on. Nadia spoke of some of her ideas about language and the nature of language as an obstruction to reality. How language can hide a lot about what is happening. She has some interesting perspectives on silence being at the root of language and her words “everything we could express is in silence” is a compelling idea. 

Jackie’s work looks at human interactions, miscommunications, (humorous, sly, sexual, andotherwise). The catalogs of gestures that make up who we we are and how we relate to each other. Also we discussed how the removal of context, or distorting of context was of interest. 

I feel as though my own sound work is moving towards an interest in improvisation as a way of understanding these routes of communication, dialogue, miscommunication, exchange. I think aesthetically I’m interested in the contrast, the tension, the push and pull of opposing or juxtaposed ideas, concepts, sounds, visuals, mediums etc. I like to think of the process of creating art as an activation – of the artist and the audience, a performative gesture that is more than just that of the performer. A complicit act = performance. 

I think all three of us work with these ideas. Something we developed in the meeting was the idea of focus on the everyday – the quotidian – the aphorism. Also the disruption of the everyday and the linear narrative. 

Before the trip we had considered focusing on the mouth as a theme of the performance and project. The mouth as the entrance and the exit, the form of communication, the way that the outside is brought inside. 

This morning we began to work out strategies for the project – different actions that we could use to express some of our ideas. The afternoon meeting will also be focused on developing strategies and planning out the shape of the performance. We’ve decided to use video projections and documentation as well as focus on some language related to the mouth and aphorisms involving the mouth.

But now it’s raining like crazy!

Merida!