It looks like an Experimentica as a feature festival won’t be happening this April, much to the dismay of many local artists. I had grown quite fond the five days of the random, shocking and sometimes hilarious work on offer. Moving on from this, three special performances will no doubt appease the hungry, Avant-Garde crowd.
Starting with Katz Milk, after their residency a week prior in Cardiff, their performance Vital Attachment left much to ponder. Dance has been on my mind a fair bit recently, as the Merce Cunningham centenary looms, the question remains: what can dance be? The moment seen within this piece was breezy, simple in delivery yet still requiring with demanding scope. The sound design also played a huge part in the show, as ASMR mingled with fragmented songs and booming electronics. The odd touch of retro devices such as a Walkman and other players also added a great effect as players moved around the space, as we followed them with hurried eyes.
The whole piece had a strange energy that was somehow hard to resist. Not a piece for everyone but some worth in the execution and fragmentary staging elements. Tin foil being another motif and small whisks on plastic being amped to savour each and every minute sound occurring in the space. John Cage lived in moments like these, perhaps my favourite section of the entire show. Some elements of the blurb about the show, could easily make eyes glaze over, but my plus one had no idea what it meant. It was simply better to see the show without any context, as I have done on many trips to the theatre.
Each performer had their own style and focus. You easily found yourself scanning the space to see what each person was up to. The sci-fi work of Ursula K. Le Guin appear to have inspired the work, though you would have no idea about this were it not for reading the promotional material. This was weird and would have been a sensory overload for those who cannot get enough of the quiet, tingling sounds which trigger ASMR in certain people.
Experimentica continues at Chapter Arts Centre with Greg Wohead’s Call It A Day and Good New From The Future: What Leg Are We On.