Live
Selected for their ability to imbue their music with a certain 'duende', more than 20 well known singers and musicians have contributed their voice to this mesmerising large-scale video installation.
Overview
The Spanish word duende is hard to translate. The director of Live: An Intimate Video Study of the Art of Performing — Jasmin Tarasin — feels that modern venues lack it, as concerts and arenas leave you pushed too far away from the breathing, perspiring pure voice and understated rhythms of one-on-one, casual performance. Too much gets lost in the translation from solo artist to stage or screen. Duende roughly means 'possessed inspiration' — this, she says, is what she was looking to bring to audiences in her installation at the Festival this year.
Live is made of two long rooms bunted in black curtains and white neon light. Four big screens sit down one wall of the first room. The second has four black booths — each with a vertical screen shining black and white videos of singers from hips to head, slightly larger than life. The same videos run in the first room. Four sing at any one time, and you choose channels on your wireless headphones to decide who to listen to from screen to screen. They belt out songs like little gods, looking down at you from a taller place. Though there's an obvious progression from the big screen to small, the little black booths are so good that the first room seems almost superfluous.
Martha Wainwright explodes on guitar, Julian Hamilton sings acapella, Juliette Lewis does some surprisingly ballsy blues and Warren Ellis is ragged and well tuned. The black and white photography works well, bringing each performer to occupy the same abstract white space. But they perform to camera. Looking into the middle distance, spit and sibilants get lost to electric backing and headphone glitches, pushing you further away from the moment. But although it doesn't quite hand you duende on a plate Live makes for good music, and good art.
Live will be closed January 18.
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