and and and also
[Click on the icon to play the audio description. Scroll down for an audio recording of the artist statement.]
and and and also, 2024
Klangfigur I-VII (silk screen on mercerised cotton, embroidery), dimensions: 80cm x 254cm.
Audio description: digital sound, 22.31 mins.
Artist statement: digital sound, 7.20 mins
Performance garment (silk screen on cotton)
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a body might
tilt
cavort
peal
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and and and also is a series of textile pieces that depict experimental graphic scores for imaginary queer voices and bodies, accompanied by two sound pieces.
Graphic scores are alternative forms of notation for sound and performance. They move away from the traditional notation of the five-lined musical stave in favour of more expressive, unconventional, and often abstract notations, at the intersection of art, sound, performance, and movement. Given their experimental non-normative nature, the scores remain unfixed, in process, and open to interpretation by and for different bodies and voices.
In Seita’s textile installation, the scores capture so-called Klangfiguren, German for ‘sonic bodies’ or ‘figures of sound’, which is both a musical term and a literary stylistic device, which brings the senses of hearing and seeing closely together. These Klangfiguren are conceptual sounds or allegorical bodies. An allegory is a form of ‘veiled language’, an image or story that captures new concepts but never explicitly. An allegory can also be a material object and visual representation that makes an idea or feeling visible and tangible. Seita’s drawn and printed allegorical sound bodies, then, represent a queerness we do not yet know. In the origin of the word allegory also lies a suggestion for how it may be used. It’s a Latin word that originates in the Greek and combines allos ‘other’ or ‘different’ and agoreuo ‘to speak in assembly’. In performance, these scores find their other-speaking in a new assembly, in a different (queer) community.
Scores, for the artist, allow reflection on artistic process, on bodies, and (il)legibility. Listening, sound, movement, and performance in this project are not limited to normative understandings of how we can or should use our bodies. The scores can be interpreted by different bodies, different voices, and don’t assume a primary language, form of expression, or range of ability. The work is informed by a drawing and sound workshop with queer young people hosted by Curious Arts (Newcastle) and by The Lichtenberger® Method in Applied Vocal Physiology, the singing method the artist learned in Germany several years ago, and the work includes prompts inspired by the method’s playful and poetic somatic pedagogy.
The textile works are accompanied by the artist’s own creative audio description (developed in dialogue with an access consultant) as well as a short performative artist statement as a sound piece that imagines and translates what these scores could sound like and what kind of queer relations or desires they intimately perform.
Exhibition:
Darlington Library’s Crown Street Gallery, solo show, August 2024, photos: Rachel Deakin
Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Open Studios, September 2024, photos: Stefanie Walk, Jo @aurali_sm
Sound pieces included in Free City, a group show curated by Mayer Pavilion, Stadtwerkstatt Kreuzberg, Berlin (2024)
Sound:
Recording and mixing by Eve Singleton, 2024
Access consultant for audio description:
Richard Boggie
Funding:
Creative Darlington, Darlington for Culture, 2024
Werner Düttmann Fellowship, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2023-2024
Research & Development Grant, NEUSTART KULTUR im Programm #TakeHeart, Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V., 2023
[Click on the icon below to play the recording of the accompanying sound piece]