2017 ︎︎︎ Invitation
Border Patrol, Portland, ME
Invitation was a research office / pirate radio station / jamspace in the back room of an old dentist’s office –an open-ended platform for shared investigation into music, sound, and reality. If that sounds vague, it was. We were experimenting with our process in public, and in a place with other people whose interests, desires, and creativity dovetailed and diverged from our own. We recorded and broadcast everything, we cooked dinner for people and mic’d that and broadcasted it too, we jammed, we had workshops on how to host a good party, we mashed up Kate Bush covering Elton John to the sound of a trumpeter parading down the street.
This is how we explained it then:
“Air enters through the nose, deposits oxygen into the bloodstream via the lungs, and is pushed out again through the mouth, vibrating a reed, passing through a modifiable architecture of valves and bells, and re-entering the atmosphere as CO2.
As musicians, we know this linear account is both true and false. The air we breathe is thick with old sounds, already processed by ancient lungs, still resonant. Our breathing is a re-performance, a cover, of when the first lung synchronized its existence with the first fern. The songs we play are rumors of what they were, and shells of what they are trying to be.
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Through collective improvisation (intellectual, musical, performative, sculptural), we research experiences of time and space that are non-linear, confounding, and bent. We meditate on how they are are already present in our lives, and how they lead us towards new performances, recordings, and broadcasts.
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Invitation was a place to continue this research, and we invited all to join us as participants in this limitless, modifiable series of openings. The deal was: “we learn something from you, and in exchange we learn something from you. We can play your records, we can scan your documents, we can listen to your theories, we can read your Tarot cards. Become an antennae. Articulate an interior shadow-form and photocopy it. Join us in the ongoing study of participatory ethics. The horn is a transmitter. Radio waves are sanctified. The room is an amp. We want to tell you what we've found and spark new findings into momentary existence. We'll be at work in the space for some time, so please consider this your Invitation.”
This is how we explained it then:
“Air enters through the nose, deposits oxygen into the bloodstream via the lungs, and is pushed out again through the mouth, vibrating a reed, passing through a modifiable architecture of valves and bells, and re-entering the atmosphere as CO2.
As musicians, we know this linear account is both true and false. The air we breathe is thick with old sounds, already processed by ancient lungs, still resonant. Our breathing is a re-performance, a cover, of when the first lung synchronized its existence with the first fern. The songs we play are rumors of what they were, and shells of what they are trying to be.
Through collective improvisation (intellectual, musical, performative, sculptural), we research experiences of time and space that are non-linear, confounding, and bent. We meditate on how they are are already present in our lives, and how they lead us towards new performances, recordings, and broadcasts.
Invitation was a place to continue this research, and we invited all to join us as participants in this limitless, modifiable series of openings. The deal was: “we learn something from you, and in exchange we learn something from you. We can play your records, we can scan your documents, we can listen to your theories, we can read your Tarot cards. Become an antennae. Articulate an interior shadow-form and photocopy it. Join us in the ongoing study of participatory ethics. The horn is a transmitter. Radio waves are sanctified. The room is an amp. We want to tell you what we've found and spark new findings into momentary existence. We'll be at work in the space for some time, so please consider this your Invitation.”
