BY MIRANDA ILCHEF
We often talk about fugues in a musical context – but what about a fugue of the mind?
This is the concept behind While You Sleep. It’s a musical fugue that also expresses a psychological ‘fugue state’, exploring our memories, behaviours, and identities.
With string quartet, piano, electronics, and video, the work encourages us to confront grief and reality. Ahead of its world premiere, we chat with Sal Cooper, who collaborated with Kate Neal to produce this multimedia work.
Tell us about the title of this production, While You Sleep. How did you come up with it?
The title of this work is a reference to the state of metaphorical unconsciousness that you might experience in a fugue state. It points to something that is sort of like the opposite of ‘mindfulness’. It is also an allusion to subconscious activity; the kind of repeated patterns of behaviour and thinking that often drives us and of which we are unaware.
In another, more literal sense, a lot of the visual material in this work was actually informed by dreams that I have had, and remembered, over the last couple of years.
The trailer itself is a work of art, and to me it felt as dark as it was intriguing and playful. What kind of ideas is the performance exploring?
It is true that this work covers terrain that is intense, strange, wistful and playful. What we are exploring are the ideas that emerged from the consideration of the Fugue: memory, forgetting, flight, escape, loss and discovery, patterns, compulsion, and the shadow of grief. This has resulted in a work that does seem to have a kind of restless energy.
Also, I did a lot of reading in the development phase of this project, with the result that there are a lot of literary references scattered throughout the work: they serve as sign posts or departure points for some of these ideas.
Tell us a bit about how you source or create footage and edit the videos. I’m fascinated by the falling horse scenes.
I have created all the footage in this show. The horse you refer to is frame-by-frame hand-drawn animation. There is also a lot of stop-motion in-camera animation, as well as live action video. The animation is immensely labour-intensive to create, as I am sometimes drawing or shooting images at 25 frames per second – and making it requires sinking into a kind of immersed, fugue-like state where ordinary time is meaningless. I just lapse into the state of drawing.
A lot of the animation in this show is very tightly synchronised to the live music, and making this sometimes I try to fall into the structure, and the nature, of the music itself. In addition to this, just wandering the streets on warm evenings with a video camera is also my idea of a good time…
What inspired you to collaborate with composer Kate Neal?
Kate Neal and I have been collaborating now for over 10 years. I consider myself very lucky to work with her because I think her work is brilliant. Sometimes, I listen to her music and it fills me with energy to create. She has a great unconventional way of thinking that inspires me and definitely drives me into new artistic territory. We have developed what I think has become a really fluent language of imagination and realisation.
One thing I really love is that, through working with her, I get this access to an extraordinary musical world that just fills me with wonder.
So what’s it like to collaborate? Can two (or more) creative brains coexist harmoniously, or are they destined to clash?
As a working artist, I have had the usual variable experiences of working collaboratively. And it can be perilous. I think an important thing is the balance between creative vision and humility – which sometimes just amounts to honesty – and is therefore difficult! Having said that, when the collaborative relationship is good – which is my experience with Kate Neal – it’s not so much about harmony as it is about trust.
The accumulative process of working together is really interesting. If you can each manage to embody a common vision as well as your own intent, then the final result can be more than the sum of its parts.
What can multi-disciplinary art achieve that one artform alone cannot?
As an artist, I think it can expand your vision and by extension to your practice. As soon as you start rejecting the limitations of your own artform, then you have a chance to start rejecting the limitations of your imagination.
In this show, we are deliberately swinging between disciplines. As a maker, it is very satisfying to break out from the imagined boundaries of cinematic structures, or visual art languages, or performance expectations. On another level, of course, this means ideally an expansion of the traditional audience base. And that has to be a good thing! This show could fit into a variety of settings: theatrical experience, concert performance, art installation, or cinematic event.
How can artists attract audience members who ordinarily might not choose to attend contemporary art performances or exhibitions?
I think we can do so by the kind of cross-pollination that comes with having multi-disciplinary works like While You Sleep. This means we are ideally reaching traditional concert-goers, cinema-goers, art lovers, and theatre audiences.
I also hope this can be achieved by presenting content that is emotionally authentic, thoughtful, and human; and not wrapped up in pretension.
See the world premiere of While You Sleep: A Fugue from 7-11 November at Arts House.
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