ENDBRINGER

 ENDBRINGER / PRESSING A FLOWER BETWEEN PLANES / HEAVEN AS HIGH AS THIS, known in short as simply ENDBRINGER, was a performance directed by Patrick Michael Ballard for the closing of Jace Space, an artist run gallery in Los Angeles. I wrote and performed an original composition for harp accompanied by Eli Klausner (live electronics) and Dan Bruinooge (drums).

The piece revolves around a singular figure and wearable sculpture created by the artist. In the wake of the everything-ending entity waking from its universe-long slumber, a single stir of its body, and everything crumbles. In the moment after the end of everything, it too begins to dissipate in the void of nothingness, accompanied only by a single edifice, condensed remnants, the last of the physical universe conglomerated at the point of disappearance. The piece happens entirely in this instant, drawing out an extended monologue of inner thoughts as the creature’s body breaks down, with the sculptures being destroyed over the course of the performance. The sculpture worn but the artist is deconstructed through the thrashing movements of a body retching to hold onto existence, and the edifice is burned in the final, post-humous scene of the piece, extending up as a plume of smoke into the atmosphere. The work is performed only at an end, and each time it is performed, the costume is mended in new ways, and new appendages are added to the costume. As a performance, the work navigates from the inner space of the gallery to a derelict alleyway behind it, and the original music composed for the work mirrors this transition. Celestial ambient tones work to oppose the strangled and vexing monologue but they give way to a rising, distorted drone which follows the creature as it slowly crawls along the floor and spills out into the alley. At this point, the harp and drums enter, joining the electronic part in a feverish sway that crackles with an intensity matched only by the pyrotechnics that signal the end, the spirit of everything up in smoke as we find ourselves back at the beginning.