Transitions, the space and time in between, between order and chaos, structure and disintegration. Walter Verdin's video music performances move around freely in this space of transition. He is seeking to abolish boundaries and to disrupt normal habits of seeing and listening. Not only those of the audiences, but also his own and those of the performers. With each new production he has refined his technique of sending everything into free fall on the one hand, and of creating new structures on the other. Susan Sontag's 'in place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art' encapsulates his rejection of any kind of theoretical approach: there is no message, just rhythm, sensory experience, atmosphere. That is why the performance only takes hold of you if you stop trying to understand it all. 'DA SSTM' is the final piece of Verdin's 'Storm' trilogy, in which he has allowed video to encroach on the three other art forms of dance, music and theatre/performance. The trilogy probes the interactions of technology (video, sampling etc.) with the various performers who are using it essentially as an instrument. During the rehearsals and in consultation with Verdin they selected and tried out the images and sound samples to be triggered in the course of their performance. Each performance is an improvisation on this material, comparable to the improvisations of jazz.
In the first part 'Storm' (1999) image and sound were triggered by five dancers with the aid of tap-tiles, infrared beams and a motion-capturing video camera. Part two, 'Miranda Project' (2000) displays many technical similarities to 'Videorhythmics' (1984), Verdin's first video concert, and to the presentation 'X-Afrika' which was first seen at the World Wide Video Festival in 1997. A new version of 'X<Afrika' is included in this year's festival alongside 'DA SSTM'. Verdin's video concerts consist of video montages, in which sound and image are always rigorously bonded together. Musicians then play and/or improvise live over the rhythmical sounds and images. In previous projects, Verdin's video composition was always the fixed starting point. The 'Miranda Project' was more interactive, since he completed the final video montage together with the musicians during and after the rehearsal session. Part three, 'DA SSTM' (2001) has been produced in collaboration with dancer/performer Michel Yang. Here Verdin and Yang have incorporated and manipulated several of the samples and techniques used in the first two parts and added new elements. Storm was chosen as the central theme of the trilogy because storm scenes are eminently suitable for all kinds of visual and auditory theatrical manipulation. There are also thematic connections: storm is a traditional metaphor of collision between order and chaos, both in the outer world and within the inner life of the individual. In contrast to 'Storm' and 'Miranda Project', we never glimpse the performer directly in 'DA SSTM'. Everything is assembled behind the projection screen bearing the pictures of the live performance: the scene-changing and technical equipment, such as tap-tiles and the infra-red beams, Walter Verdin at the buttons and Michel Yang in the performance space. At the same time the projections and happenings in the background show through the screen, giving rise to mirror-like doublings. The projection screen is therefore both the line that separates the audience from the performers and the point at which production and reproduction converge.
Like the five stages of a storm, 'DA SSTM' consists of five sections, each with its own particular rhythm. First the approaching storm: a slow rhythm that moves towards a climax. We see how Yang uses tap-tiles to trigger sound and text samples on the wall and the floor. The text is fragmentary and is taken from the words of her own song. The storm announces its approach menacingly and we watch it trying to find an outlet in Yang's movements. In the second part the rhythm is strongly intensified. This is the first storm, blowing loudly but at a constant pitch. The material consists for the most part of found footage of the remains of a small town after a tornado and the voice of one of its female inhabitants telling what happened. Yang's movements interrupt the infra-red beams that are aimed at the 'loops' of image and sound. The rapid but monotonous rhythm is generated by flying scraps of sound and image. The strange effect of depth created by the combination of the projections and the events showing through from the background sucks us into it like a cyclone, until all at once we are brought down to earth with a bump by a sobering change of scene. Part three lets us catch our breath: we are in the eye of the storm where everything is calm. Yang stands on a revolving platform, with light sensors on the floor around her. She is lit from above so that she can move her shadow across the sensors which then launch a series of video samples featuring the singer Graziela Bogianni. Only scattered vowels survive from the original material (improvisations on the texts of storm scenes from various Shakespeare plays). Her face can be seen in extreme close-up on a monitor. Behind it the projection screen shows Yang's silhouette surrounded by flames. In combination with the slow rhythm of the rarefied, high-pitched song this makes us fancy that we are going through the storm again in very slow motion and complete stillness. The fourth part features the second storm, which is shorter but fiercer than the first. The violence is suggested mainly by the music which consists of the powerful rhythms of bass guitars. The video samples, triggered by tap-tiles and touch sensors are taken from a documentary about weather: images of stormy skies and rapidly changing cloud formations, accompanied by the voice of a typical documentary narrator. It's a storm consisting of violent gusts, suggested by alternating turbulence (visual and aural) and stillness. Finally, in the last slow section, we watch the passing of the storm. Yang is now dancing only with her face, in close-up. The image surface has been subdivided into nine invisible sections. In these Yang's blue-painted lips and eyelids trigger nine different sounds and words (the nouns from the first part of Shakespeare's 'Tempest'). Slowly, Verdin changes these samples, giving rise to a private game between the two artists whose mood varies from a relaxed 'all is well again' to the aftershock of a fatal catastrophe.
– Lies Holtrop
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Specs
DA SSTM
Duration appr. one hour of improvisation. DVCam and live video cameras (colour and black&white and infrared), and video sampler (Arkaos) on PB500 (Mac). Projections and music triggered by sensors (light sensors, infrared beams, pressure and touch sensors and software Big Eye). Sound from the video and MIDI devices
X<Africa 3.1
Video concert, Hi-8, 1:00:00, sound of the video and synchronised 8 track and midi-sequencer and live music
DA SSTM
Concept, video and music, Walter Verdin, movement research and performance Michel Yang, technical coordination Bart Huybrechts
X<Africa 3.1
Concept, composition, video editing, samplers, synthesizers Walter Verdin, composition, electronic and acoustic percussion, Frank Michiels, sabar, djembe El Hadji N'Diayé Rose, sound mix Stefaan Geens
Walter Verdin and Michel Yang
Walter Verdin ° 1953, Brussels, Belgium
Michel Yang ° 1973, New York City, USA
Live and work in Brussels, Belgium
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