Concert: FROM HET HALLERBOS TO THE KING OF F'RANCE IS BALD

Three sound interpretations on a single picture by sound poet Lawrence McGuire and collaborators. Every transformation of the source picture into textual, symbolic and poetic domains is a waypoint on the way to an eventual vocalization. Currently on show at West's future permanent location called 'Testforum' as part of Textura B are an audio documentation of a performance in which three kinds of interpretation were sounded, and a vitrine holding materials and experiments from the process. In West's new location, the three interpretations will each be taken up again and sounded into the lower floor, where an audience can listen from different heights. These renditions continue the transformations shown in the exhibition, this time caArried out in a group setting. The quartet Het preveriatief works from a letter-symbol resynthesis of the picture, duo RND from a visually masked version, and the duo with Gene Carl from a nonsense translation into a self made conlang called VOCOS. Het preveriatief [Roc Montoriol, Jacob Eckhardt, Lawrence McGuire, Cis De Gendt] is a Netherlands-based quartet, sharing an interest in perception and its relation to presentation formats, mediality, volumes and space-time relations, among other things. Their work currently engages with amplification, sound recordings, electro-acoustic devices, objects, performance and voice. For their performance at West Testforum, they will continue interpreting a letter-symbol resynthesis of "Het Hallerbos," which they then collectively but also individually interpreted as suggestions, actions, and interventions related to their specific instrumentarium. Jacob Eckhardt (2001, Brussels) is a sound maker whose work deals with the material conditions of sound-replicating technologies (turntables, radios, MiniDiscs, transducers, CD players, open-wave receivers, magnetic tape(-players) etc.). Roc Montoriol is a sound artist based between Barcelona and The Hague. His practice engages sound ecology and performativity to investigate the mutual dependencies between place, listening and technics. Cis De Gendt (b. 1999) is a Belgian artist-organiser and performer-composer living in The Hague. His artistic interest lies in working towards (musical) situations wherein listening is accounted for as a contingent process. He deals with this by proposing a perceptual-materialist approach, put in relation to the specificities of the recording and performance formats. Cis furthermore runs default den haag: a non-profit curatorial platform focused on the presentation of international experimental music and sound-based practices in The Hague. RND is fiction writer and musician Jiyoung Wi together with Lawrence McGuire. Both players will aim to sustain a texture that is prompted by a visually masked version of "Het Hallerbos." Jiyoung Wi will use the piano and objects, Lawrence will use a laryngograph and his voice. Jiyoung Wi is a musician/improviser and fiction writer floating between Rotterdam and Seoul. Her bifocal practice explores narrative possibilities in non-image-based mediums. She has developed a series of ‘sound fiction’ works focusing on the tentative reciprocity between sound and text. As a self-punitive improviser, through her negative virtuosity and risk-taking gestures, she confronts the thresholds of sonic immediacy. Gene Carl and Lawrence McGuire Furthering their collaboration, they will give a text-sound recital of a nonsense translation from natural language into VOCOS, Lawrence's adaptation of Hans Freudenthal's LINCOS. Where the other readings of "Het Hallerbos" abstracted it into reduced forms, this one bloats the context. The art object is a) celebrated or b) ridiculed by way of overglossing the original. Adding more until it collapses and can possibly be reborn. Gene Carl will use a megaphone, an autoharp and his laptop. Lawrence will use his voice. Gene Carl graduated cum laude from Pomona College, where he received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship that brought him to the Netherlands in 1975. Together with Marshall Reese he founded the sound poetry magazine E. In 1982 he won the Composition Prize of the Royal Conservatoire. He received a prize in France for his quadraphonic electronic work "What the River Said", residencies in Belgium and the United States, and a prize in the Netherlands for Carl Piano Trio. He has played in Canto Ostinato (piano quartet), Hoketus, Byte (touring with Fred Frith), the Gene Carl Band and other ensembles. Living in Rotterdam, Lawrence McGuire works with the presence of voice in text, symbol and sound. His works errand into text-sound, text-print, text-image and always culminates into a work that is voiced either by his own mouth or by others in a private or public setting. Most works are iterative efforts on creating a vocality by other means. He can be found collaborating with other sound poets, voice researchers, playwrights, musicians among others.