BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
As an audience member at Trigger Warning, you’ll be part of a brave and confronting live performance that pushes for social change by raising awareness of violence against women.
And we think that makes it one of the most important musical events you’ll experience this month.
Award-winning new music composer Cat Hope teams up with writer/director Sally Richardson, actor Hayley McElhinney (The Babadook), and lighting designer Joe Liu to create a gritty and noisy stage show exploring the lasting trauma that results from this ongoing issue of violence against women and vulnerable people. Blending research and eye-witness accounts with distorted and re-mixed sound, Trigger Warning is set to have you perceiving the issue in a new light.
Cat talks about how and why she uses sound to get this powerful message across, and what we should expect from the performance.
Your latest project Trigger Warning is part-scripted performance, part-noise concert. What is noise, and how do you compose it?
Noise for me is sound at its richest – many describe it as the sound that’s usually not desirable in music, maybe because it mostly eschews melody and harmony, and focuses more on textural qualities. My work as a sound artist and composer has many facets, and one of them is as a noise artist. My approach to composition in this show is largely conceptual – what works with the text and the scene; what highlights it, beds it in, assists it, changes it or drives it forward.
Why do you feel noise, as opposed to composed or improvised music, is most effective in sending the messages of Trigger Warning?
Noise music can be composed or improvised, too! But noise music encompasses a very broad range of dense sound worlds – it’s not always loud or confronting; it can be gentle and coaxing, too. For this reason, it’s great in performance works, and I love to use it in this environment. Often, it is decided what we will do musically at what time in the piece, but the musical detail is often improvised during that frame. Others are fixed – either stylistically or as notes. There is quite a lot of sampling in this show – I really enjoy the dynamism this provides on the night. We could prerecord some of these things, but it’s much more exciting to do it right there and then, grabbing and manipulating sounds on the fly.
Why do you feel it’s important to use art as a way to spread the word about violence against women? What is the power of art in this regard?
I really do believe that artworks have the capacity to capture and share something about the human condition, or a specific issue, more effectively than language as a simple written or spoken word. They provoke us to think about things we may never have thought about, or to think about them differently. Good art is a powerful social agent, even if it’s not ‘about’ something.
What do you hope the societal outcome of this concert will be?
That audiences engage with the subject matter in a way that is rewarding and enriching. That they realise that there is not a big difference in the way women experience trauma between different situations and cultures. Whilst there may be issues of scale, we can empathize with each other. We can see ourselves in others.
You’ll be performing at the event – talk us through how it’ll work on a practical level.
My part is to create the sound aspects – and I call them that because it’s more than performing pieces of music; it’s designing sound aspects as well. Sometimes, I am playing a bass guitar, or a double bass, but then singing a solo slow-core like song, or creating and layering radio static. Other times, it’s about designing the way Hayley’s voice is experienced – acoustically, amplified, in another part of the space – thinly, loudly, disembodied, or neutral, for example. Hayley is wired with pick-ups at one point, and we also use old cassettes and records. There are also double bass parts and electronics, amongst other things. Expect a thrilling, engaging and intense experience where sound, light and performance truly intertwine.
See Trigger Warning at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts from 19-20 August. Presented by PICA and Performing Lines WA. More info online.
Image supplied. Credit: Gibson Nolte.
