[inter/meta/trans] Fwd: July 14th 7 pm Palm Springs Swimming Pool = La Scala + Jacques Cousteau

[adam overton]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Ron Athey" <athey at earthlink.net>
Date: 12 July 2007 12:35:20 PM PDT
To: "athey earthlink" <athey at earthlink.net>
Subject: July 14th 7 pm Palm Springs Swimming Pool  = La Scala +  
Jacques Cousteau
Reply-To: athey at earthlink.net


This Saturday, July 14, at 7 p.m. - Juliana Snapper Underwater Opera  
Work’n’Progress: --  Please bring swimsuit

Dear all,

I am writing to announce events and introduce the concept of Juliana  
Snapper's new performance, an underwater opera, which will eventually  
be performed in the ocean. Susan Matheson and I are co-hosting the  
first performance workshop in Palm Springs this Saturday. We have  
limited capacity, so if you are in the area or interested in coming  
to Palm Springs for the event, please email me at athey at earthlink.net

Soprano and musicologist, Juliana Snapper (my Judas Cradle  
collaborator) with artist Jeanine Oleson, are creating a series of  
intimate public experimentations to be performed in pools and  
bathtubs around LA and San Francisco. To get a better idea of what  
she's up to, I did a quick Q&A with Juliana, which is pasted below,  
as well as links and artist bios. If you are interested in a future  
event, please check their blogspot linked below, or email Juliana and  
Jeanine at: aquaopera at gmail.com

Thanks for your attention and hope to see you soon, Ron Athey

http://underwateropera.blogspot.com/

http://julianasnapper.com/


My Interview With Juliana:

Ron Athey:  I hate to start of lowbrow, but I was talking to Andrew  
Infanti, and our only context to underwater "vocals" was Weechi  
Wachi, the mermaid theme park in Florida, where the sexy mermaids lip  
synch to songs and do provocative acts like eating bananas underwater..

Juliana Snapper:  (ignores my cheapshot) What distinguishes this  
piece most from other musical projects in the water is that both the  
singer and her voice are in direct contact with the water. (A French  
composer supposedly got closest to this by submerging a singer in a  
glass bubble but she never even got moist.) I'm still learning how to  
make the most of the voice in water because it behaves so differently  
and I have to relearn everything. Right now I'm working with my sound  
in two ways: singing directly into the water and through prosthetics.  
Just singing into the water entails maximizing the body's conduction  
of vibration so that the bones move as much sound info as possible  
and working with the air bubbles out the mouth -- tinkly flows of  
small bubbles or giant boomy releases? They have their own character.  
Singing into a metal snorkel takes the bubble noise out of it and  
lets the sound work in the water with more ring. The water sound will  
be mic-ed and projected above water. I’m curious though too about  
making ear horns for the listener to dip under water to hear  
directly, and in Palm Springs it might be great to put people right  
in the pool.

Ron: It seems challenging enough to use a breathing apparatus  
underwater, but to actually perform operatic vocals..

Juliana: It’s a tricky thing to take on because it stresses  
technique beyond operatic limits and a small amount of water sucked  
in accidentally can be fatal. But that’s really how it started -- as  
a partner piece to the upside-down table scene from Judas Cradle. I  
can’t understand why singing has never been approached this way –  
every other instrument has been broken and altered to see what other  
sounds were there. With the voice, its not only a musical question,  
but pushing the instrument to the limit as a way of making it  
expressive raises questions of embodiment and socialization and  
expressive exchange, that let opera speak in new ways.

Ron: As one of the main elements, water is also symbolically loaded.

Juliana:  I’m interested in the fantasies of feminine power and  
singing underwater. Not just Europe but India, China, and Africa have  
mythologies about sirens and mermaids. What’s up with that? What’s  
up mermaid on the rock with no pussy, just a fat tail? What’s up  
with the siren who lures sailors to their death by ear fucking them?  
Lesbians and manatees...  Its a  fishpussy mess, girl.

Ron: How did you come to work with Jeanine Oleson in this process?

Juliana:  My original plan was to ask artists to write me scores,  
starting with Jeanine. Jeanine is writing the first score, which I  
feel is going to have a big impact on the opera as a whole, maybe  
thread through it. She's coming to help tease stuff out with these  
workshops to see what the palette is. She's fucking sharp and her art  
is fleshy and beautiful and witty. I like this classical music  
structure because it can layer authorship in a way that’s generous,  
flexible, interesting. I bring the raw materials of singing  
underwater, and soundworlds that stem from that, and then I'll work  
with a handful of scores (from graphic to situational and broad  
stroked to micromanaged) that form acts of a large opera as its  
performed in different sites on the way to the ocean.

Ron: The concept of working in the ocean is huge and seems much more  
uncontrollable.

Juliana: I talk about the ocean as the final destination because its  
gonna take some real gear and boats and deep comfort singing under  
pressurized water in the cold. Imagine grottos around the world as  
backdrops... I'm just as interested though in the smaller water  
venues – Jeanine has a dream of doing an overnighter at the  
Manhattan Aquarium --
and especially being in people's homes. I find singing in close  
quarters powerfully humanizing and right now in this world and in  
this country, it is small humanizing acts that draw my attention more  
than anything else.

Ron: That is always the challenge with performance work, how to keep  
the experience intimate, even as the project become grand. This is  
definitely experimental and symbolist, is there also a political  
feeling in this work?

Juliana:  Since working in the water I have been thinking a lot about  
the new relationship with water that is already in motion for we  
people of the earth. Climates are changing so that inland fresh water  
sources are drying up and coastal cities like San Francisco,  
Manhattan, Amsterdam may be underwater in a few decades.

Ron: The fulfillment of J.G. Ballards Waterworld. I know you are also  
working with Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, how are  
they supporting you in this development process?

Juliana:  Dr. Grant Deane is my man at Scripps. He's an oceanographer  
studying ocean acoustics, 1) how water and air interact in bubble  
fields to measure climate change, and 2) underwater communications.  
He's got an archive of underwater recordings --bubble fields,  
critters, glaciers melting, rain, wind...-- and he's helping me think  
about how to use my voice and sound underwater in both practical and  
acoustical terms.

Ron: And finally, the horrible reality of funding, how is this going  
to work?

Juliana: We're working on getting money but nobody's bitten yet.  
Writing a few arts grants, and also applying for science money. I'd  
like to have some dollars right now but I think when this gets going  
the funding will come.

BIOS

Vocal artist Juliana Snapper creates experimental opera, performing  
internationally with opera and new music ensembles, and working in  
collaboration with theater, visual and new media artists. Snapper’s  
work has been discussed in journals such as Salon.com, Art in  
America, and TDR: The Drama Review among others. Her vocalism,  
playing at the ridge of virtuosity and breakage, is described as  
both “precise” and “too warmly human”, “ecstatic” and “a  
flayed shred of human need, desire, pain” Born in Albany,  
California, Snapper began performing and recording professionally as  
a teenager. At 15 she gave her first new music premier at UC  
Berkeley, and by 17, she had joined her first opera company and taken  
part in an Emmy award winning recording with the Philharmonia  
Baroque. Juliana received her BM in vocal performance from the  
Oberlin Conservatory of Music and then returned to California to  
pursue an interdisciplinary Ph.D. (Critical Studies/Experimental  
Practices in Music) at UC San Diego. Snapper has featured recently in  
Los Angeles at the Disney RedCat Theater, the Armand Hammer Museum,  
and in New York at PS122, Participant Inc. Gallery, and for the  
NYU’s Interactive Arts Performance Series and the Performa05  
Biennial. Juliana gave the US premier of French composer Philippe  
Manoury’s interactive cycle, En écho in 2002 with programmer Miller  
Puckette and they have since presented the work throughout the United  
States. In 2004, she created the role of Rafael for poet Eileen Myles  
and composer Michael Webster’s opera Hell. Snapper created the lyric  
spectacle, “The Judas Cradle,” with artist Ron Athey, which was  
commissioned by the UK Fierce! Festival and toured internationally on  
a grant from the British Arts Council in 2005. Her voice pieces for  
video, with artist Paula Cronan, have shown in festivals in New York,  
Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, London, Madrid, and  
Zagreb. Snapper’s writing on music is published in The Journal of  
Open Space, Encyclopedia, and The European Journal of Cultural Studies.

Jeanine Oleson is an artist whose practice incorporates  
interdisciplinary uses of performance, film/video, installation, and  
photographic work. She attended the School of the Art institute of  
Chicago, Rutgers University, and Skowhegan School of Painting and  
Sculpture. Oleson has exhibited at venues including: L.A.C.E., Los  
Angeles; Monya Rowe Gallery, NY; Samson Projects, Boston; John  
Connelly Presents, NY; Bates College Museum of Art, ME; Kansas City  
Museum of Art, MO; Participant, Inc., NY; PS 1 Contemporary Art  
Center, NY; Galerie Schedler, Zurich; Pumphouse Gallery, London; Art  
in General, NY; and White Columns, NY.


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