Re~Percussion

A vacuum cleaner breathes new life into a bicycle. Electromagnets create feather-light sounds in a grand piano. Vibrating speakers make drums sing, objects dance, and strings vibrate. This concert performance explores vibrations in time and space, between objects and people, through movement, sound and light.

Re~Percussion is not the work of one composer, but an experiment where hierarchy is attempted to be flattened, so that all participants have ownership of the end result. Meidell invites contributors into a process where all become co-creators. Artists from five different countries and three disciplines have, through several meetings, explored the concept of resonance both metaphorically and practically. What resonates in us, in the instruments, the objects and the space? What resonates with us as a group? What happens when all is put into play?

The musicians Magda Mayas [DE] (prepared piano) and Sigbjørn Apeland (wooden organ) – like Meidell – tend to their instruments in unique ways beyond tradition. Dancer Mirte Bogaert [BE] is also a composer and has a musical sensibility that expresses movement rich in details. Carlos Vasquez [CO] and Melina Pafundi [AR] immerse themselves in old, analogue film techniques and process their own recordings made on 16mm film in inventive ways in real-time. Film projections create movement and contribute to sound and light.

Re~Percussion is somewhere between installation and concert, performance and happening. The title plays on the span between the words percussion and repercussion.

Percussion describes the extended acoustic instrumentation in the project. Repercussion describes the process when the resonance is set in motion. This aftereffect means that the instruments and artists affect each other, creating new repercussions. The use of Re~ describes a kind of reuse of percussion, a reinterpretation, change, metamorphosis or a new outlook. Everyone affects everyone and is dependent on each other. The instruments sound through each other using magnetism. In the piece, we gravitate towards the other at the same time as we repel and create resistance, and thus we are driven forward.

Re~Percussion can also be experienced as a sound and film installation on Sunday, 15 October, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The installation has been created through the concert performance and contains remnants from the day before. Traces of vibrations and movements and fragments of dialogues are recontextualized and can be encountered again. Between 12 am and 2 pm, performance artist Fernanda Branco [BR] is invited to meet the work in its transformed form. Branco operates in the borderland between avant-garde theatre, dance, installation and performance art - recently oriented around "elongated" performances. Her hybrid works are oriented around symbiotic relationships between body and voice and unite land art, eco-perspectives, as well as uncategorizable artistic expressions. Entrance with a museum ticket.

Re~Percussion is a part of Stephan Meidell’s PhD in Artistic Development at Fakultet for Kunst, Musikk og Design in Bergen. The project is supported by Program For Kunstnerisk Utviklingsarbeid, Fond For Lyd og Bilde, Kulturdirektoratet and Bergen Kommune.