Fool’s Window
Fool’s Window is an immersive theater work by Los Angeles artist Patrick Michael Ballard that premiered September 2020 in which I performed a collection of improvisations for solo prepared harp. I was one of five invited participants who, working independent of one another, were given an isolated “window” inside the theater where they encountered a customized tableau of scene objects and sculptures. A new panorama was carefully arranged and ceremoniously chosen for each incoming participant, curated as a prompt to inspire object-oriented investigation, soft world building, and collective constructivism. The video documentation of these explorative solo performances became an artifact that evolved into disembodied dialogue between the artist and each performer, unique collaborations in a time defined by social distancing.
As an improvisor, my approach was to treat both the objects of “Fool’s Window” and my instrument as fetishes in a fantastical world, talismanic symbols whose power lay in their singular expression and body memory. The time spent in the space was continually magnetized by the visceral energy of these sculptures, the majority of which were comprised of recycled materials whose past lives and uses were either veiled or emphasized. I realized that these ritual objects were causing me to think about the many relationships present in the work: my body and my instrument, my body and the objects, and how these many dimensional bodies inhabit the space. I was surprised how the harp, an instrument, soon inhabited the role of an object while the scene objects became themselves instruments. These convergences informed another layer of narratives which prompted the resulting improvisations and sound objects.
Some of the objects were set on physical pedestals and styled as totems, which were then treated with a mournful elegy that builds slowly in the lower register of the harp. Other objects were taken apart and even found themselves reconfigured to the harp itself, whether in between the strings or interlaced between the pedal mechanisms. This recombination resulted in differently tinged atmospheres, depending on the object, ranging from whimsy to horror to holy reverence. Preparing the harp not only altered the sound of the instrument but also effected a transmutation in how I positioned myself between the physical body of the instrument and the body of the viewer, imaginary and filtered through a screen.
I recorded the harp in a way that mirrored the disorientation of the space, mixing the sound of a microphone inserted into the body of the harp with a stereo capture of the cavernous room space. Unexpectedly, the sounds that crept in from the world surrounding the space I recorded in, Los Angeles’ Chinatown, implied a subtle counterpoint with the harp, the hiss of a passing bus lingering in the resonance of a melodic gesture or the drone of a motorcycle forming an unsettling interval with the bass strings. The resulting improvisations vary in length, structure, and tone, from simple sketches of a fleeting thought to more playful and percussive romps. All of these artifacts exist simultaneously as stand-alone vignettes as well as parts of the overarching narrative, distilled further as juxtapositions and conversations with one another.