Salamanda tandem Provocation: "On Meeting"

It's a tremendous privilege to 'know', and experience ‘meeting’ another person through art.

I had such an experience last week in Norway where I sang with a young singer Tine, and a musician/composer called Jon from Signo a centre for deafblind people. Unable to communicate through words or signs as neither of us spoke the same language, Tine offered me a wide palate of vocal sounds that grew and expanded there and then between us. This was an example of finding, allowing, making, remaking as well as shifting the platform of support between us, done moment by moment in creative dialogue with each other; responding as it worked or even teetered on the edge.

This was a performance full of complexity, virtuosity and it was nearly 45 minutes long, but most of all it was a journey into the unknown, where our shared sense of loss and wonder met through this world of sound. I have never experienced the like - we gave and received, as mutual appreciation healed us. Was this therapy for me? for her? or was it Art? I'm sure the sound we produced was worthy of an audience, but we had no audience to speak of, only this acute sense of listening to each other and Jon there too joining in as both witness and participant.

It worries me though, that when presented with a ‘show’ to deliver, us artists can easily fall back on impositional ways of producing the work, marshaling the sounds and movements of others, or over tidying up their canvasses. Perhaps it's to remove the fear of failure or is it because we aim for 'quality or aesthetics'. Who knows what drives it, and that's what I want to ask you now. Do you know?

I know after last week that the alternative is in a very different register.

Modified 5 times, last modified by Salamanda Tandem on Wed 2nd November, 2011 @ 1:18pm