Annie Lapin Collaboration, January 14
Ideation Laboratory: Fingal’s Cave
Who:
Annie Lapin: makes paintings and usually doesn't perform them in
front of a crowd.
David Dominique: is currently a composer pursuing a Ph.D in Music
Composition and
Theory at Brandeis University and will be playing the Flugabone
Brian Walsh: Multi-reed madmen and one of the top clarinetists,
experimental and classical, working today
Eric KM Clark: Violinist, composer and experimental collaborator extraordinaire
Percussionist TBA
Lily Simonson: makes paintings that abstract romanticism through the
forms of underwater life, Anne Frank, and other things you wouldn't
expect
This is the first performance of an experiment meant to invoke the
totality of cultural material that comprises the “aura” of a physical
thing. It is a séance to channel the stream of cultural flotsam and
jetsam emitted or “inspired” by one place in particular; Fingal’s
Cave, which has been a beacon for Romantic thought and art for centuries.
Fingal’s Cave is a sea cave found on a remote island off the coast of
Scotland. Hexagonal columns of basalt jut up from the sea to create a
massive cavern, standing amid the waves like a strange ruin eroded by
millennia of tides. Countless composers, poets, playwrights, and
artists, from Mendelssohn and J.M.W Turner to Pink Floyd and Matthew
Barney have responded to this cave in some way or another, and
reflected upon it in their work.
The subject of the performance is not the cave itself, but rather the
chain reaction of cultural creativity it sets off. We are not
interested in the physicality that by chance or design apparently
calls forth an artistic response. We are responding instead to the
meta-symbol of Fingal’s Cave, the culmination of cultural ideation
generated in response to the original.
Operating under the premise that most works “inspired” by the cave are
in fact just another interpretation and further abstraction of this
meta-symbol, the performance sets up a series of interpretations, to
occur in real time. Each stage responds to the previous one, while
also bearing in mind all of the cultural effluvia that are antecedents
to the current performance. By displaying the process of ideation,
creation, and interpretation through two of the most prevalent mediums
that respond to the cave, painting and musical composing, our goal is
to channel the historico-cultural energy surrounding this icon in one
concentrated hour-long performance.
Painting begins the chain reaction, instantaneously followed by a
musical response by four musicians, and in turn, another painterly
response to that music. During the course of the performance, the
interpretations may switch course, and the works may influence each
other simultaneously in real time. Like echoes resounding and
mingling as they bounce off opposing walls of a cave, the responses
will feed off each other, reflecting upon the original but becoming
something else entirely as time goes on.
Who:
Annie Lapin: makes paintings and usually doesn't perform them in
front of a crowd.
David Dominique: is currently a composer pursuing a Ph.D in Music
Composition and
Theory at Brandeis University and will be playing the Flugabone
Brian Walsh: Multi-reed madmen and one of the top clarinetists,
experimental and classical, working today
Eric KM Clark: Violinist, composer and experimental collaborator extraordinaire
Percussionist TBA
Lily Simonson: makes paintings that abstract romanticism through the
forms of underwater life, Anne Frank, and other things you wouldn't
expect
This is the first performance of an experiment meant to invoke the
totality of cultural material that comprises the “aura” of a physical
thing. It is a séance to channel the stream of cultural flotsam and
jetsam emitted or “inspired” by one place in particular; Fingal’s
Cave, which has been a beacon for Romantic thought and art for centuries.
Fingal’s Cave is a sea cave found on a remote island off the coast of
Scotland. Hexagonal columns of basalt jut up from the sea to create a
massive cavern, standing amid the waves like a strange ruin eroded by
millennia of tides. Countless composers, poets, playwrights, and
artists, from Mendelssohn and J.M.W Turner to Pink Floyd and Matthew
Barney have responded to this cave in some way or another, and
reflected upon it in their work.
The subject of the performance is not the cave itself, but rather the
chain reaction of cultural creativity it sets off. We are not
interested in the physicality that by chance or design apparently
calls forth an artistic response. We are responding instead to the
meta-symbol of Fingal’s Cave, the culmination of cultural ideation
generated in response to the original.
Operating under the premise that most works “inspired” by the cave are
in fact just another interpretation and further abstraction of this
meta-symbol, the performance sets up a series of interpretations, to
occur in real time. Each stage responds to the previous one, while
also bearing in mind all of the cultural effluvia that are antecedents
to the current performance. By displaying the process of ideation,
creation, and interpretation through two of the most prevalent mediums
that respond to the cave, painting and musical composing, our goal is
to channel the historico-cultural energy surrounding this icon in one
concentrated hour-long performance.
Painting begins the chain reaction, instantaneously followed by a
musical response by four musicians, and in turn, another painterly
response to that music. During the course of the performance, the
interpretations may switch course, and the works may influence each
other simultaneously in real time. Like echoes resounding and
mingling as they bounce off opposing walls of a cave, the responses
will feed off each other, reflecting upon the original but becoming
something else entirely as time goes on.
