He’s the lightning in the family, I’m more a sort of fog. Know what’s the right thing to do, but don’t do it. But he’s the lightning and he’s entered the service of industry for the time being. He sold for me last time. I’m something and he’s not, he’s only the lightning; quick to act, modern type. But the lightning by itself’s a barren thing. Look at you folk at Sellanraa, now; looking up at blue peaks every day of your lives; no new-fangled inventions about that, but field and rocky peaks, rooted deep in the past, but you’ve them for companionship. There you are, living in touch with heaven and earth, one with them, one with all these wide, deep-rooted things. No need of a sword in your hands, you go through life bareheaded, barehanded, in the midst of a great kindliness. Look, Nature’s there, for you and yours to have and enjoy. Man and Nature don’t bombard each other, but agree; they don’t compete, race one against the other, but go together. There’s you Sellanraa folk, in all this, living there. Field and forest, moors and meadow, and sky and stars – oh, ’tis not poor and sparingly counted out, but without measure. Listen to me, Sivert: you be content! You’ve everything to live on, everything to live for, everything to believe in; being born and bringing forth, you are the needful on earth. ‘Tis not all that are so, but you are so; needful on earth. ‘Tis you that maintain life. Generation to generation, breeding ever anew; and when you die, the new stock goes on. That’s the meaning of eternal life. What do you get out of it? An existence innocently and properly set towards all. What you get out of it? Nothing can put you under orders and lord it over you Sellanraa folk, you’ve peace and authority and this great kindliness all round. That’s what you get for it. You lie at a mother’s breast and suck, and play with a mother’s warm hand. There’s your father now, he’s one of the two-and-thirty thousand. What’s to be said of many another? I’m something, I’m the fog, as it were, here and there, floating around, sometimes coming like rain on dry ground. But the others? There’s my son, the lightning that’s nothing in itself, a flash of barrenness; he can act. My son, ay, he’s the modern type, a man of our time; he believes honestly enough all the age has taught him, all the Jew and the Yankee have taught him; I shake my head at it all. But there’s nothing mythical about me; ’tis only in the family, so to speak, that I’m like a fog. Sit there shaking my head. Tell the truth–I’ve not the power of doing things and not regretting it. If I had, I could be lightning myself. Now I’m a fog.
Markens Grøde, 1917, Knut Hamsum
The starting point of EGURRA is XY, a minimal piece by the american composer Michael Gordon. Through different aesthetic changes and personal decision a concert/installation has been developed.
The performance explores the limits of the music written down in a score. Which decision we take as a musician in order to bring a score alive? Is it a piece of paper music itself? Which are the limits of the authorship in a score? Which is our leeway as a performers?
Having a score already written down as a starting point, different interpretation decisions have been taken later on. Until which point we can still say that what I play is a piece by Michael Gordon?
In this concert/installation wood is the principal esthetic statement. Looking at wood as a sculpture material, sound source, human activity or way of living, it becomes the total idea of the performance.
During the performance the sculpture and the musical instrument melt into the same thing. The instrument that is a sculpture-The sculpture that could sound as an instrument. Fascinating with these two sides of the coin, the proposal is also a combination between the ritual of concert and the simple experience of being, of observe, of walking around without any pretension. Rationality and non rationality play an important role in this performance.
Performances:
16th March 2017. Mars Festival, Bijloke, Gent, Belgium
14th December 2016. Sala Amos Salvador, Logroño, Spain
11th June 2016. D’APOSTROF Art Gallery, Meigem Deinze. Belgium
28th August 2016. Kunstenfestival PLAN B, Bekegem. Belgium
Rubén Orio 