Imago
instrumentation | string quartet
date | 2021
duration | c. 15-17'
premiere | commissioned by the Phillips Collection Centennial for the Attacca Quartet, upcoming premiere on May 2nd, 2021
note | Imago is a response to artworks that, due to the pandemic, I couldn’t see or interact with in real life. The distance from the pieces and the wonderful Attacca Quartet created something of a disembodied writing experience. Untitled & The Allusion of Gravity exist most clearly in my mind, illuminated and filled in by imagination & impression. However, I can’t draw on the memories or emotions of first sight, deep study, or sketching in their presence. What did translate over the internet and staring my eyes red at the laptop screen, was the musicality and impossible figurations of Linn Meyers’ and Alyson Shotz’s incredible works. Their limited materials, repetition, and sheer physicality of process made me determined to bring those presences into this new work and seek proximities.
Repetition, for me, is queer — pushing to see a single moment from every angle, the desire to experience multiplicity, recognizing the capacity of objects to move in a thousand directions at once. I wrote to invoke images of physical creation with timbre, process, and shared materials. I strove to interact the motion of drawing with the smooth movement of a quartet of bows, of adding detail with pen or brush as dragging tightened hair. I saw the physicality and endurance of continuous motion, bowing or harmonics or strums or dense harmonies, as the bending and beading of a complex work. I sought the infinite shapes and implications of a group orientation towards sculpture or magnified square of mylar - in their overlapping vision, a new and beautiful object. A wider perspective.
(Imago is the final stage of insects metamorphosis - happy cicada year)
date | 2021
duration | c. 15-17'
premiere | commissioned by the Phillips Collection Centennial for the Attacca Quartet, upcoming premiere on May 2nd, 2021
note | Imago is a response to artworks that, due to the pandemic, I couldn’t see or interact with in real life. The distance from the pieces and the wonderful Attacca Quartet created something of a disembodied writing experience. Untitled & The Allusion of Gravity exist most clearly in my mind, illuminated and filled in by imagination & impression. However, I can’t draw on the memories or emotions of first sight, deep study, or sketching in their presence. What did translate over the internet and staring my eyes red at the laptop screen, was the musicality and impossible figurations of Linn Meyers’ and Alyson Shotz’s incredible works. Their limited materials, repetition, and sheer physicality of process made me determined to bring those presences into this new work and seek proximities.
Repetition, for me, is queer — pushing to see a single moment from every angle, the desire to experience multiplicity, recognizing the capacity of objects to move in a thousand directions at once. I wrote to invoke images of physical creation with timbre, process, and shared materials. I strove to interact the motion of drawing with the smooth movement of a quartet of bows, of adding detail with pen or brush as dragging tightened hair. I saw the physicality and endurance of continuous motion, bowing or harmonics or strums or dense harmonies, as the bending and beading of a complex work. I sought the infinite shapes and implications of a group orientation towards sculpture or magnified square of mylar - in their overlapping vision, a new and beautiful object. A wider perspective.
(Imago is the final stage of insects metamorphosis - happy cicada year)