Méiyǒu shālù – without killing (A. Troisi 2023)
“Méiyǒu shālù (Without Killing)” stands as a collaborative venture, a confluence of acousmatic music and interpretive dance that I, Anna Troisi, had the honor of creating alongside the esteemed Rongrong Gao, an exceptional dancer with a distinguished background from the Beijing Dance Academy.
This piece was a definitive feature of the past “Great Sounds Seek Silence: Sonic and Visual Art Exhibition,” held at the Exhibition Space on the Ground Floor of the St. James Hatcham Building in London from the 24th to the 30th of November 2023.
In this collaboration, Rongrong Gao brought unparalleled grace and expertise to the performance, engaging in a poignant exchange that traversed the realms of auditory creation and physical narrative. Inspired by the sage insights of Laozi, our work deeply resonated with the exhibition’s theme, echoing the intricate interplay between silence and sound, the formless and the shaped.
“Méiyǒu shālù” was not merely a performance but an immersive experience that wove together art, culture, and philosophy. It invited the audience to a celebration of the profound depth of Chinese tradition while advocating for peace and non-violence, themes that find universal resonance across all cultures and time.
At the heart of our performance was the innovative use of Chinese characters for “without killing” [沒有殺戮] as a graphic score, moving beyond traditional musical notation to intertwine visual art with sound in a profound and contemplative manner. These characters, intricate and visually captivating, became more than text—they transformed into an auditory experience, harmonizing sight and sound in a display that embodied the exhibition’s exploration of the visual influenced by the non-visual.
The performance was a poignant symbol of pacifism, addressing the exhibition’s dichotomy of sound and silence. The absence of violence, encapsulated by “without killing,” emerged as a profound silence, echoing more powerfully than any audible sound.
Through “Méiyǒu shālù,” I aimed to convey a pacifist message, inviting the audience to reflect on the profound impact of non-violence and the potent stillness of peace. The composition itself was an acousmatic journey, inviting the audience to immerse themselves in a soundscape created by these Chinese characters, transcending linguistic barriers to evoke deep contemplation and reflection.
This piece stood as a testament to the collaborative creation and the enduring belief in the power of art to embody and communicate the principles of Tao and the teachings of peace. The performance was so well-received that the Goldsmiths Confucius Institute For Dance and Performance has graciously offered to produce a film directed by Dove Che, capturing the essence of this captivating work. This film is set to be screened at the Chinese New Year festival organized by the institute in February 2024, promising to extend the reach and impact of “Méiyǒu shālù” to an even wider audience.
Norm contaminated [A Troisi 2018]
Exhibition “Brownsea: an imaginary island (an island of the imaginary)” 22/03/2018 to 12/05/2018 – Arts Catalyst, 74-76 Cromer Street, King’s Cross, London. Pictures courtesy of Neal White.
Norm contaminated is a work commissioned by Arts Catalyst for the Exhibition “Brownsea: an imaginary island (an island of the imaginary)” 22/03/2018 to 12/05/2018 – Arts Catalyst, 74-76 Cromer Street, King’s Cross, London.
Norm Contaminated is part of a series of artists’ projects, curatorial interventions, and transdisciplinary research Test Sites: Poole, which is curated and produced by Arts Catalyst and it is the result of a field work taken place the 22nd of February 2018 around the Perenco Oil Farm, Poole, Dorset. The commission for the exhibition and co-inquiry aimed to respond to the issue to involve the local community to respond collectively to social and environmental challenges in the local area of the Poole harbour. This piece is part of a project called Test Sites, a longitudinal environmental project with a range of partner institutions (The Forestry Commission, The National Trust, and Canals and Rivers Trust). The long-term goal is to engage the public in a discussion of ethical and social implications of environmental politics, and to address key issues of sustainability for agencies and local socially engaged groups, clubs and societies. Link at the page event:
https://www.artscatalyst.org/brownsea-imaginary-island-island-imaginary
Hyperdrone #2
Hyperdrone – [N White, A Troisi, R Smith 2015-2016]
The project extends research undertaken into the global techno-scientific sites, from labs to observatories that support advances in human development; experimentation, scientific instruments, supercomputing advances etc. Using the deep geometry of data, the abstractions of science and other forms of human interpretations of the natural world, a scientific belief system, the work challenges the viewer to consider their own scale and sense of place in relation to unfolding ‘hyper’ events and their ability now and in the future, to understand events such as climate change – events beyond their own temporal register or senses.
History and Thanks
The Radome Panel was part of a golf ball shaped sphere used to cover military and industrial satellite dishes and radar – used to trace or work with near earth objects such as planes, GPS satellites etc. It was acquired for Steve Rowell (Member of Office of Experiments, 2010-) for the project ‘Ultimate High Ground’, which was part of ‘Dark Places’, curated by Office of Experiments at John Hansard Gallery with Arts Catalyst and SCAN in 2009. The experiment has been developed so far with thanks to Wysing and the Experimental Media Research Group at Bournemouth University.
Exhibited:
“Objectif Exhibitions” Gallery in the exhibition of Neal White “Sites of Excavation and Construction” 13 November 2015–16 January 2016 http://objectif-exhibitions.org/programme/exhibitions/neal-white-sites-of-excavation-and-construction
The Wysing Arts Centre, August 2015
DHRA 2016 Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts
9 Events with Tina O’Connell & Neal White at the RCA Dyson Gallery, in association with Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp Saturday 5 March – Friday 25 March 2016
OB-scene, a live audio/visual performance for photoplethysmograph and female body [A Troisi 2016-2018]
OB-scene, is a performance centred on a live sonification of biological data gathered in real-time with a medical probe (photoplethysmograph), made by the author. The use of the photoplethysmograph, which takes inspiration from the first medical vaginal probes used for diagnostic purposes by Masters and Johnson (1966) introduces a media-archaeological aspect to this work. Data gathered through the probe is processed and transformed into sound and visuals projected in the exhibition space. OB-scene takes inspiration from Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter (2009) in which she argues that human agency has echoes in nonhuman nature and vice versa, shifting away from anthropocentrism towards the concept of “vital materiality” that runs across bodies, both humans and unhuman. Furthermore, OB-Scene is affiliated with an emerging movement of women and technology called ’XenoFeminism’ (XF). It introduces the idea of techno-alienation and focuses on the concept of other/diverse desires, new forms of desiring, experiencing something other (Laboria Cuboniks 2015). In this specific work, this takes the form of a technofeminism incorporating the fluid, the non-human, and the diverse. In this performance, the body is fused with the technology, rather than empowered or enhanced by technology itself, body and technology become a unique actant (Latour 2009) enabling the audience to experience the sensorial assemblage as a space for communal experience with political implications. OB- scene is as an immersive environmental work where the senses, affect, and memory were key features of “assemblage thinking” (Hamilaikis 2017).
