With new scores by: Ximena Alarcón-Díaz, Sarah Hennies, Tomoko Hojo, Kunci Study Forum & Collective, Cannach MacBride, Bint Mbareh, Elaine Mitchener, Matana Roberts, Romy Rüegger, Ginger Brooks Takahashi

Workshop facilitation: Kay Zhang, Vivian Wang, Jules Sturm&Angelo Custodio, Franziska Koch, Irene Revell, Aio Frei

Curated by: Franziska Koch, Irene Revell, Aio Frei
Organised by: OOR Saloon & Friends

OOR Saloon has invited a series of artists/composers/musicians to develop new text scores that will be collaboratively activated, read, discussed and performed by the participants/audience at this day-long workshop-performance-event that is open to all (no prior skills or experience needed). The scores will also be published in a special riso-printed “score-working-zine” given to everyone attending.

The event focuses on cosmologies of non-separability, attentive and situated listening, joint improvisation, reading and discussion. The format thinks itself diffractive with and through the scores as relational propositions for embodied political negotiations, as temporally non-linear possibilities of gathering otherwise.

How to hold attention collectively for a tiny moment in space-time?

A score as a momentary scaffold, as a starting point for a temporary commitment to move into shared practice. Never an agreement, not separable from pain nor discomfort, insecurity nor misunderstanding, but an invitation – the score as an agreed-upon shared experience.

We intend to generate a space in which the score can allow us to find shared attention, focus and be mindful about the power these motions hold. Shared focus can bring relaxation to the nervous system, fosters forms of trust and connection. In a time when fewer and fewer futures are being cared for, a score holds tiny sparks of manyfold, diffractive possible futures, uncertainty as much inherent as is its intention of communality.

Our shared interests in the political aesthetics of the text score include artists working with text/instruction/scores in areas that span queer-feminist and decolonial listening, disability justice and expanded forms of practice that might be termed ‘score-thinking’. These seem to have a distinct resonance with historical works: specifically, Irene’s research has focused on speculative feminist histories of the performance score, in particular text instruction works developed by Pauline Oliveros in the early 1970s, amidst a constellation of her friends and peers including the score magazine project Womens Work (1975-8) co-edited by Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood. As well as the practical reading, negotiation and performance of the new works, we will also foreground these discussions about the form(s) of the score, and its histories.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/38580