Sensation is Not Neutral

participatory performance for spectators

Thursday, April 25, 8pm, Canadian Music Centre—Ontario

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This program marks, in a variety of ways, the politics of often unmarked defaults of concert music, such as listening protocols, aesthetic discourse, and physical infrastructures (e.g. lights, printed programs). Taking as axiomatic that Western modernity treats sensory (in)capacity as an alibi for necro-biopolitical distinctions, the program features works by Colin Tucker and Yoko Ono (the latter in a new realization) which situate the concert hall’s fashioning of the spectator’s sensory capacity within broader imperial necro-biopolitics. Attendees will have the option of participating or not participating in directed yet open-ended listening, movement, speaking activities which both cite and reframe routine concert music protocols.

Program:

Yoko Ono, Hide Piece (1961) new realization with spoken text in a concert hall

so sensitive as to need protection (part 1 and part 5) (2022-24) for spectators and tools of security

the coherence is the problem (2023) text, realization with listening score and audio

before Taste (2023-24) for sampled language and archives, participatory realization with speaking voices, live electronics, and classical music samples

what is necessary prior to the otherwise (2024) text, realization with speaking voice

Harmony is a Weapon (2022-24) for dominant seventh chord, annotations, tools of “harmonization,” and images

(all pieces excerpt the first by Colin Tucker)