Pan.Sori!   2015

The idea of this piece is about the following experience. Someone says: Do you know what ... (for example: Pansori) is? I'll show you on Youtube.

How much of what we see in such a medium is what was recorded in a certain situation? does the medium develop a life of its own? what does that destroy, what does it enable? what does it take away, what does it give, what does it hinder?

I wanted to investigate this in a line-up of a technical object and a human playing together. A small speaker replaces the Pansori singer. The piece starts with a call that is answered by the Buk-player. Like in Pansori.

(Investigating a question is an artistic mode: a fantasy emerges, a constellation turns into a process, into a game, a back and forth of roles, movements, sounds.)

After the quotation, the Pansori singer's call in the loud speaker, the buk player answers with an organic and straight movement. Her goal is the next call. It indeed appears, but perhaps slightly out of time. Too late, too early. Whether this be the reason or not: The acclerando gestalt gets more and more overloaded, becomes more and more complicated. Finally the phrases become so extended that they are not any more phrases. What started as response and imitation, loops in itself. The energy comes to a dead end, and freezes. The loud speaker, not any more target of the movement, becomes more and more silent. The buk player, however, who early became like a machine, has divided herself into two different halfs. Only the right hand beats the buk, always loud, but also always more rare. The cramping leads to wholes, and at any time we perceive from the ould speaker a very different sound. Soft waves, like falling clots of soil, and silence in between. The left hand which had resigned reacts to this new sound, to this new quality. The right hand, however, continues with the isolated violent hits. And on one of them, again the call from the beginning. But now not from the loud speaker, but from the player.

So this piece is also a phantasy about different constellations between human and machine, between a human being and what has been produced by the human being. And unfortunately it is not always the case that the human being is the living part in this constellation.

Aufführung Daegu 21. Juni 2017

Aufführung Hannover 11. April 2017

Aufführung Seoul 15. Juni 2016

Uraufführung Panicale 21. August 2015

Program notes for first performance (21 august 2015)
Partitur
Aufführungsmaterial