Vanessa Porter (percussion artist) & Rafael Ossami Saidy (dramaturgy/live cam)

Musicologist Michael Zwenzner in conversation with Vanessa Porter & Rafael Ossami Saidy.

MZ: First of all, I would like to ask you to introduce yourselves. Maybe you first, Vanessa, and tell us a bit about how you work together, especially for this evening, for this project.

 

VP: Okay, my name is Vanessa Potter and I work as a freelance drummer. I live in Stuttgart and my work involves me in many different projects. These range from large new music ensembles to small formations, like the one we’re now showing at Eclat. I really enjoy working with different disciplines, dance, video, electronics and I usually build my own programs and then bring them to the stage. And this time with Stephanie Rosa, a dancer, and with Rafael on the live cam.

 

RO: My name is Rafael Ossami Saidy. I was born in Berlin. I work as a freelance director, video artist and I am also always on the live camera for theater plays or live formats and then do the live camera. I enjoy working in the field of drama as well as in music theater contexts and also very much in installation works. And I’m most interested in everything that has to do with immersion, so I really enjoy working with the audience and with immersive formats.

 

MZ: I see. How did you both find each other for this project? Is this your first project together or how did it come about?

 

VP: Yes, this is the first project. We didn’t even know each other. Christine Fischer asked me for the evening at Eclat and I told her what I had in mind, what I would like to do and what I was still looking for. And that included an all-rounder like Rafael, who can support me with video and images, but also with directing with an outside eye, because a lot of pieces are just now really coming into being and are not completely predetermined. And it was important for me to have someone who could support me and contribute their own thoughts and ideas.

 

MZ: And you both developed the dramaturgy of the evening together? And then also the question of why these three composers are being brought together in this evening? Are there any connecting moments? Are there perhaps more contrasting moments? Or what motivated you to create this program in this way?

 

RO: We are currently working in rehearsals and also with our dancer to really create an overall dramaturgy for the whole evening with these very different pieces, which they are. They are different pieces by different composers and so we are really trying to look at them together in real live rehearsals: How can we make an arc out of it, how can we create an evening whose parts also communicate with each other, so to speak? Maybe you can say something about the individual composers?

 

VP: Just as Rafael said, there are very different pieces that we have deliberately chosen, so the one very large and long piece is by Rebecca Saunders. That’s where the title of the evening comes from. It’s a piece that works a lot with sonority, has something very direct to it and therefore focuses on very detailed sounds. There is no big show, as you might sometimes imagine with percussion, but every note is really deliberately played at this point with this mallet so that this sound comes out. So it’s something very intimate and I really, really enjoy playing the piece. It’s a new piece in my program and it was important to me to show it that evening, but also to distinguish it from the version that has been performed a few times before–although not so often, because there are so many special instruments, I also had to have instruments built for it, because you can’t just buy them in an instrument shop. In any case, it was important to me to expand this piece, which already exists, with livecam, with light, with visuals, simply to bring it into a new context and thus make these sounds have a completely different visual effect.

 

MZ: May I ask briefly in between, did you also communicate with Rebecca Saunders about what that might look like? Or did she give you a free hand to work with it? And another question, you say it’s a long piece. I’ve just listened to the recording I have again and the piece lasts eight minutes. Is there apparently a longer version?

 

VP: That was probably one movement you heard. So it’s 30 minutes, but it’s divided into different islands–well, islands might be a bit of an exaggeration–but it’s divided into different atmospheres. And I got in touch with Rebecca because I wanted to clarify how far the piece could be altered. However, we’re not going that far away from her composition in terms of sound. I think we are rather expanding it. We’re adding something new to it instead of taking something old away and replacing it. And she was totally okay with that and gave us a free hand, just like you said.

 

MZ: And how does the camera come into play? So maybe we don’t want to give too much away yet, but I’ll ask a basic question: What working techniques do you use?

 

RO: Yes, the camera helps you to get very close to the action, for example, to set a completely different focus. And it can also direct the gaze, because the camera itself is an eye that can move. And so we make sure that we really say that we are telling the story of a completely different world with this piece.

 

RO: The camera is live and we work with material that will also be seen live. And yet you still have the opportunity to work with alienation, with disturbances where you can also think musically, with disturbances that drive into the image and then withdraw again. You can also create atmosphere through a camera image by working with very specific effects that are placed on top of it. And in this way, I hope we can really create an experience that is also visually strong and where we as viewers really allow ourselves to be slowly sucked in over the duration of this piece. And it is also possible to work with pre-recorded material, so that pre-produced material is constantly being pushed into this live camera and then rotated out again, so to speak. And I think that’s a very, very nice effect that can open up a whole world.

 

MZ: This camera will also be used for the other pieces throughout the evening, and perhaps we’ll come to the next piece by Anna Sowa with a very unusual title and this setup with nine snare drums. I imagine that to be quite opulent on stage. What can you expect from this piece?

 

VP: So there are actually four pieces in the end, but we can talk about that again in a moment. But one of them is by Anna Sowa. »The family looks best in photos«–that’s actually a Polish expression and it describes it quite specifically. It’s a very performative piece in which the snare drums describe individual family members and their stereotypes. So it’s about a very, let’s say, a very striking, stereotypical family image. So there are these different roles, and she says in the piece that you should rely on the family as little as possible–you have all these superficial conversations and something holds you together, even though it’s really just about the weather. But you meet up again because it’s family. So she describes the whole thing in a very simple and also very humorous way, as many people have probably already experienced with one or another family member or event. And this is portrayed by these snare drums, which take on different roles and people–and it’s a really great piece! It’s a German premiere and I’m really looking forward to performing it at Eclat.

 

MZ: I find it almost a bit frightening that this instrument, the snare drum, is used in this family context! You kind of have military associations at first. But of course the instrument can certainly be used in many different ways. Is there any information about how you came up with the idea of choosing this particular instrumentation?

 

VP: Um, no, not really. What I’ve discussed with her so far, or what she writes in her score, is simply that when you think of percussion instruments, there’s this visual association with a person. It has these feet at the bottom of the stand and you can also bend them so that they kind of move. I think that tended to be a thought. And of course we also work with electronics. So the snares are not operated in the sense of snare drums like in a military march, but actually serve more as objects that I then operate to represent the respective roles.

 

MZ: Then we come to the third piece, in which the dancer probably also plays an important role. Or is she also involved in the other parts of the evening? Or is Jennifer Walshe’s piece actually the one in which the dancer is needed, or where she interprets what Jennifer Walshe herself has normally enjoyed doing as a performer, both vocally and as a visual performer? How does this piece, this concept, work?

 

VP: We are currently in the process of discussing how Steph can possibly appear beforehand. She is of course present in the piece by Jennifer Walshe, which is our duo moment that we will show on stage, but with the help of videos and various effects, we might be able to show her beforehand in order to tell the overall story. We’re working on that right now. That’s actually the process right now. The piece is actually for solo percussion, I premiered it two years ago and now I wanted to expand it with a dancer, add to it, make it complete. For me it’s a duo piece because it has a lot to do with movement and dance. So the story, to put it briefly, is that as a viewer you imagine watching a video where you can press pause, where you can rewind, where you can fast-forward because you’re not so interested in something. And we relate that to real life, so to speak. So we want to zoom in on moments that you sometimes have to take a closer look at to understand what’s going on, that you might want to take a closer look at if you want to reexperience them yourself. We go over situations, we freeze, we replay everything from the beginning, we go back and forward again to simply take in different perspectives–to see that the image we perceive once in a millisecond is perhaps not always the true and final image. And we also worked very intensively with Rafael.

 

MZ: Rafael, can I imagine that you are also in action as a video performer with the camera? Or are they fixed cameras that you use? Are there perhaps even different approaches?

 

RO: So perhaps I should come back to the play, because it’s so interesting. The very, very special thing about this piece is that what you see scenically is actually a movie that you wind through, so to speak, where you hold something, zoom in, freeze, play it faster. In other words, it’s a very special piece of–let me say–music theater in the sense that it actually says: we’re looking at filmic material. Although we are actually watching a live scene and listening to live music, the scene claims, so to speak, that this is filmic material that you are watching with the dancer. And the dancer and Vanessa are acting live on stage as filmic material, so to speak. And that, I think, is something very special and something very great, that we think about ourselves, so to speak, how we intervene technically in such processes, how we manipulate things, sometimes people or the environment or even media contexts, try to produce them the way we want them or jump back and freeze them, play them faster. And I find it very, very appealing to see how live material is manipulated as if it were film material. And about the camera: we will be working with a camera, and it will be a moving camera that I manipulate, that I move. And this camera will, I believe, be very much a discovering camera and one that is not super sharp, does not give a crystal-clear HD image, but rather searches for something from a kind of dreamlike perspective, tries to find something, discovers things that are then gone again. So it will be a camera that really descends with us as if into a dream and discovers things that we don’t know exactly: What was that? What did I just see? Now it’s gone again! Which then also shifts the look, i.e. what you see at that moment, ever so slightly, changes it, makes things blur.

 

MZ: Interesting. Because it’s actually a bit of a counter-sphere to the very physical emphasis of dance, but also to the percussion part. Playing the percussions also has a dance-like quality. Is that probably also part of the concept, that two different worlds come together in a way that could only be different?

 

RO: In the video now, right?

 

MZ: Yes, there are the live parts where you also experience the dancer and the drummer on stage, so to speak, and that has something very concrete about it–Rebecca Saunders is also very well known for this incredible physicality of her music, which is usually born out of silence, but then comes across all the more intensely. All in all this seems to me resulting in a kind of polyphony of ideal spaces that takes place there. May I put it that way?

 

RO: Yes, we’re actually looking to intensify this, to make it even more contrasting, for example by really working with fonts and fade-ins, not »just« with live camera images, but we’re looking to create an even stronger field of tension, because the danger on stage is always that you’re showing something twice through a camera, because we’re already looking at a live event. And the important thing is always to look: What kind of field of tension should be created? That’s why I think we’ll work more with overlays with strong fonts and less with a live camera, especially for the Walshe piece.

 

MZ: And Vanessa, you said there would be a fourth program item as a surprise, right? What do you mean by that?

 

VP: No, not really. It’s actually already been decided by us and can be made public. We thought that we were missing a certain mood in these three pieces. Or at least we additionally wanted to portray something else. And that’s why I chose Emil Kuyumcuyan’s piece The Town for vibraphone, amplified zither and video. And it also deals with this family material in a very similar way to Anna Sowa, so it’s also very much about intimate relationships and how these must, should, may be cultivated, and how this whole construct works, but in a completely different way to Anna Sowa. So it’s a very, very intimate, very introverted piece and also has this visual aspect, which we haven’t yet discussed in terms of how it will take place in the concert. But it is the case that video and film and music extend over the whole evening and in this process here and also in January, when we meet again, we want to try, as Rafael said, not to repeat anything, not to show anything twice, but to somehow rethink everything. That’s actually the idea.

 

RO: Yes.

 

MZ: Another question about the dancer: Is there a fixed choreography that already exists? Maybe you can say something about it, because that’s always a question of codification, is it notated or are there improvisational aspects? Or is that already provided by Jennifer, so to speak?

 

VP: Nope! Jennifer Walshe didn’t even »supply« the music, so to speak. Walshe gave us the idea of doing exactly what Rafael told us in detail, with this zooming in, going out, live video, live performance, video. And that’s pretty much the material we got and that’s why everything is absolutely in the making. We try out a lot, we experiment a lot: How far can we go, how striking do we want to show something, how abstract do we want to keep something? So it’s actually our own creation, which we’re now trying to develop for us two personalities based on Jennifer’s idea, which is also great and simply fits very, very well into the program. Because we didn’t want to stage anything completely, we didn’t want to put on a drama, we really wanted to create a situation that was as close as possible to the audience, but which is repeatedly disturbed by these video effects. Which also brings with it something strange when you start dancing normally and then something happens that you weren’t expecting. So it’s not choreographed, it’s not composed in the strict sense, it’s just happening now.

 

MZ: I see. And what is the performance situation or the stage situation like? There is also a certain relationship with the audience, as I can see from the festival flyer. How do you work there? What is the situation in the room?

 

RO: Yes, there are basically several stations. In other words, there is not one spectator situation, but two, and yet four pieces. In other words, it’s the view, but of course also the situation in the room, the place where I find myself as a spectator, that changes from piece to piece. And with Walshe, for example, there are also different places where this takes place, as well as a dancer who also moves. And so we are also faced with the challenge of creating an arc for the audience experience, because you don’t just sit down once and then simply see everything, but actually walk through the space and then find yourself in the stands. But not until the second or even third piece. And we try to ensure that this experience, that these pieces can communicate with each other. So we are really looking right now in the rehearsals: How can we build connections between the pieces, how can it work so that, for example, when you’re in the last piece, you haven’t already forgotten the first one? So how can we manage to really think in terms of one world and interlink these things? And in this way, I believe an audience experience can be created that is to some extent a physical experience, but also an intellectual experience in that you can draw connections between the pieces.

 

MZ: That’s a good keyword! What I still intend to ask you is perhaps a more general question, namely about the connections between this artistic practice that you are pursuing and the reality of life. You could say that we are living in difficult times. And I wonder whether and how you are dealing with this as artists. Are there connections between this aesthetic space that you create here and what you experience in everyday life, including the social issues that you perhaps encounter from time to time? Do you see a connection or are there intentional connections? Do they arise of their own accord or how do you behave? What do you think about these connections?

 

VP: I think it’s a »both, and«. We both work with very different programs and sometimes you can see a very strong reference to social events, which is exactly what we wanted, forced and planned. Sometimes, like now with Steph in rehearsals, for example, we recognize some situations that we hadn’t planned before, but where we say: Wow, that’s actually super topical, let’s pursue it somehow and incorporate it into the programme. I always think it’s important and good for any kind of artist to bring programs and artistic concepts to the stage with social issues in mind. I don’t think you can avoid that at all. So you can’t simply exclude everything that happens out there and just stay in your own bubble. But I also believe that it’s not always necessary as a musician to make a big statement on stage, for example. I think that’s why we’re simply musicians and not necessarily politicians or other people who always have to make some statement. So I think it’s a balance and I think our program has both the one and the other. And it’s always super individual. For example, there may be someone sitting in the audience who feels totally moved by a certain situation because they are currently experiencing it much more strongly than those of us who are developing the program, which we wouldn’t expect anyone to perceive as a reference to society. And on the other hand, we try to convey something where others might say: I didn’t feel that way at all, because everything is always shown in a rather abstract and not super concrete way.

 

RO: Yes. And at the same time, there are sometimes surprising connections to social issues and contexts. So, for example, when you talk about Dust, you naturally ask yourself a completely different question today: Where does the dust come from, where has it settled? What is the result? I mean, the piece itself, I think it’s fair to say, works with really beautiful sounds and is beautiful. And in connection with the question: »Where does the dust come from?«, we suddenly realize that these are also sad moments. So you ask yourself: what is buried here or what is trying to be uncovered here? What has happened? It’s all full of dust. Or when we talk about Walshe, we also see people, you, Vanessa, and Steph, who manipulate each other, so to speak. It’s about manipulation, also about ourselves to a certain extent, and I say, if not about overreaching, then at least about intervening in each other’s bodies and states and about the desire to replay or skip things, or to be able to skip things, which you can’t actually do. And I think you suddenly realize when you’re working that we can’t escape these social issues at all, they’re just right there in the pieces nowadays.

 

MZ: Wonderful. So that’s exactly what I always wish for, namely the reconciliation of relationship magic and mood magic. That the two simply come together, that it’s not just atmosphere, but that an incredible number of networks of associations become possible and connections exist. I think that’s wonderful. Thank you very much.