Midnight Reflections about our own Northern Ventriloquist's Skills

Abstract

“Midnight Reflections about our own Northern Ventriloquist's Skills” is articulated in the form of a podcast in a conversational style scripted by longtime collaborators composer and performer. It starts by cartographing the authors’ previous collaborative works until they approach their last project ensemble, Campo Amniótico [CA] (2021), work in which the feedback or Larsen plays a paramount role, making the artwork highly unstable and elusive. As a result, performers and composer are in constant trouble, stripped of their cognitive performativity by the once enhancer technology, that in CA becomes almost a threat. That’s when the podcast starts to interact with recorded extracts of philosophers Rosi Braidotti and Achille Mbembe, and psychologist Thirusha Naidu on issues concerning posthumanism, postcolonialism and technological escalation. By applying and discussing their theories in the field of artistic research and, more specifically, in that of contemporary music, the authors will situate CA as a post-human artwork that aims to tip the balance more towards subversion than the status quo. That is following Eve Sedwick's precept, when she said twenty years ago with some disillusionment that the result of a work is usually always the same: a little subversive, a little hegemonic.