Internet as echo chamber, plus the return of Bob Newart

Last night I performed a spoken word piece at the indefatiguable Rinus Van Alebeek's Slow Noise Festival #5 event at Udo Noll's gallery, Studio Aporee on Burknerstrasse just around the corner from where I live in Neubeca (or, as some insist on calling it, Kreuzkolln). Rinus began with an interesting performance / sound piece where he scratched ink pen words on paper contained in a miked-up wooden "laptop", then passed it to a Japanese person, who did the same (with the slightly different-sounding strokes of hiragana and katakana). Meanwhile, sound artist Seiji Morimoto played tones, sine waves, hums, guttural irregular pulses. I wish I'd taken my camera, because Morimoto looked great sitting with his mixer and speakers in front of Udo's black motorbike.

My piece used Udo's live-streaming webcast, which threw a five second delay onto my voice by sending it out to the internet then back into the room. Speaking into a headmounted microphone, I improvised stories around this echo, working around the multiple delay taps (internet feedback) as old phrases died slow digital deaths. Udo meanwhile increased the level of feedback as the performance went on. Although it was technically just a spoken word performance, the sound was actually very satisfying and complex, and entirely generated by the internet itself. My stories concerned the red and green crossing lights on the Skalitzerstrasse, Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, a television studio full of bees, and a journey through Tokyo.



Afterwards Roddy Schrock, conductor/dancer Nathan Fuhr, and writer A.J. Goldmann came back to our place where we ate freshly-baked Turkish bread dipped in wasabi and olive oil (surprisingly good late-night food!) and watched Landscape with Robert Ashley: What She Thinks (It's History). As, you know, you tend to do at 3am with a rowdy bunch of friends.

This might be a good moment to announce that the Bob Newart piece I planned to do at the Performa Biennial in New York in November will take place in Performa after all -- sneaking in the back door, in a sense. I originally planned to tell nonsensical jokes in a cabaret venue, dressed up as Bob Newart, an unfunny comedian. Now, instead, the piece will be part of A Spoken Word Exhibition’ at The Swiss Institute in New York between November 1st and 7th, curated by Mathieu Copeland. It'll mix the Whispering piece I did last year at Blow de la Barra in London with the Bob Newart idea: on application, gallery staff at the Swiss Institute will whisper to visitors nonsensical jokes I've emailed in. Some of them may even be funny.