Elaine Mitchener: What’s The Score?
October 2021
Elaine Mitchener eats part of the score for her Industrialising Intimacy performance piece, Oxford, 2015. Photo: Pier Corona
The experimental vocalist shares some examples of radical approaches to creating and performing musical scores
On 28 October at London’s Somerset House, Elaine Mitchener will deliver an in-person performance-lecture which explores diverse approaches to writing and using performance scores without the use of traditional western musical notation, from text and graphic scores, to techniques drawn from performance art and physical theatre.
The event, which closes The Wire’s Music By Any Means series, will examine the practices of artists associated with the Lettrist and Fluxus movements, including Alison Knowles, Katalin Ladik, Ben Patterson, Jeanne Lee, Isidore Isou and others. It will conclude with a discussion between Elaine Mitchener and vocalist Loré Lixenberg.
In advance of the event, Elaine has shared a number of links to examples and analysis of the performance art of Fluxus and Lettrism.
“Dating from the 1960s and compiled by George Maciunas, the founder of Fluxus, Fluxfilm Anthology consists of 37 short films ranging from ten seconds to ten minutes in length. Made by artists ranging from Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell to Yoko Ono, they celebrate the ephemeral humour of the Fluxus movement. Fluxus’s interdisciplinary aesthetic brings together influences as diverse as Zen, science and daily life and puts them to poetic use. Initially received as little more than an international network of pranksters, the playful artists of Fluxus were, and remain, a network of radical visionaries who sought to reconcile art with life.” — Ubuweb
The Romanian Lettrist sound poet is interviewed by Orson Welles in the 1955 documentary Around The World With Orson Welles.
Artist Instructions: These artworks aren’t finished until you participate
Danielle Johnson, Curatorial Assistant at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, discusses five scores by Fluxus artists George Brecht, Alison Knowles, Yoko Ono, Mieko Shiomi and Ben Patterson.
The US artist discusses the history of Fluxus.
The Hungarian poet, performance artist and actress performs “White Bird”, “Four Black Horses Are Flying Behind Me” and “Ice Bird” at the Bucharest International Poetry Festival, 2019.
The Dutch vocalist performs Kurt Schwitters’s Ursonate, augmented with live typography by Golan Levin, at STUK kunstencentrum, Leuven, 2007
The African-American Fluxus composer directs a performance of his work Pond with participants at the Docentitos Academy, the Weston Art Gallery's summer school for young people aged 9-12, Cincinnati.
The experimental African-American poet reads “Gyre's Galax” which was issued on the 1967 Smithsonian Folkways anthology New Jazz Poets.
A recording of the solo voice piece “Angel Chile” from the 1975 Conspiracy album by the African-American singer, composer and Fluxus associate.
Programme details of UK singer Loré Lixenberg’s opening night performance at a 2015 Berlin exhibition of works by Gil J Wolman, a key figure in the Lettrism movement.
In person tickets for Elaine Mitchener’s What’s The Score event are available from Somerset House.
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