First Buzzard at the Body
Elliot Vaughan

Wild Fabrics
Antonia Barnett-McIntosh

24/10/21⁣⁣
Performance started at 5PM.
Free entry


Works-in-process made in collaborative conversation.

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First Buzzard at the Body is an experimental solo vocal performance loosely hung on a theme of birdhood. A setlist of poetic texts are subjected to transformative compositional processes, gutting them of meaning (regurgitated words, parroted mimicry) or stumbling through the banal into the sublime (the song of an ugly fledgling).

Drawing on 70’s sound poetry like Canada’s Four Horsemen, 60’s minimalist composition such as Steve Reich’s phase pieces, the immediacy of punk, and the sprawling romance of the natural soundscape, this show of unpredictable sweetness and aggression was created in conversation with Antonia Barnett-McIntosh’s Wild Fabrics.

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Wild Fabrics
A solo performance, an experiment. Sitting at the intersection of composition, performance, field recordings, speech, and interview transcription. A recorded element transcribed live.

Transforming original material through the body of the composer-performer and the transcribing machine; hesitations, mistakes, rewinds, stops and starts becoming embedded into the rhythm and theatricality of the resulting performance.

Having conversations within and without conversations, of the everyday, in modes from loose, untamed improvisation to highly-rehearsed exactitude. Easy chats, serious musings and musickings, flippant remarks, the ums (or is that erms?) and ahs and yeahs... yeahyeah--yeah, the flow, the criss-cross, cutting in, the total and instant changes in direction of conversation, or is that changes of direction in conversation?


Facilitated by Marcus Jackson.
Supported by Wellington City Council.