Paula Matthusen · Composer

Sound for Restagings No. 2: Of Serra (to movement) was developed for Abigail Levine’s choreographic engagement with Richard Serra’s Prop Pieces from the 1960s, in which heavily weighted objects such as steel rods and plates are balanced against each other to hold one another in place.

In the case of Restagings No. 2, a series of dancers lean in to and gradually pivot against a series of graphite-covered panels, leaving the trace of their bodies and movement against the both the canvas and the wall behind it.

Electronics developed for performance for Levine’s work attempted to play with a similar sense of subtlety, slowness, and accumulation. Performers were equipped with FM transmitters and small microphones, which enabled me to generate radio-mediated acoustic feedback within the performance space. Taking this approach, subtle shifts of the body would have clearly discernible impact on the electronic tones that emerged through this process of generating feedback.

Inserted in to the process were a series of pulsating low frequency oscillators, which allowed me to further play with how feedback was excited within the space, and also to play with the errant radio signals that would occasionally work their way into the space.

Restagings No. 2 was performed over the course of several days at Fridman Gallery in New York and at Vox Populi in Philadelphia. Initial work for the piece was developed over the course of a residency at Centro Mexicano de la Música y Artes Sonoras (CMMAS) in 2018.