-the results of the game-
I wanted to record all the Special A. concerts of this tour to be able to open a discussion about audiences in these underground places, but I had so many technical problems that it seemed just fine to report what I basically heard with words. The evolution of the show and the variety of social spaces made the reaction of the audiences very specific to their context, without big surprises.
Note: An overhead microphone is a microphone designed to capture sound from a pretty large area. I use it to record samples of the audience.
Kranj - Izbruh Bazen, squat, 15 people, mainly drunk women. The atmosphere was rather dark and cold in the beginning. The overheads didn't work. The audience loved screaming so much at the soundcheck that they never really stopped. They had fun. Nothing about building strange songs together. Recorded on dictaphone.
Murska Sobota - MIKK, youth club, 25 young people of both sexes. No overhead at all. My headset microphone did not work anymore. I recorded a background voice on dictaphone before the gig and used it for an action show during which I broke the club's microphone - so I put my head in the trash and screamed.
Domzale - Akumulator, youth club, 20 young people of both sexes. I used people to create another dictaphonic background.. Before the gig, one person after the other was dragged outside and asked to sing the highest note they could for as long as they could. Only one girl refused. I also went to a bar and asked people to tell a Slovene joke, thus some good laughter and local words were on the tape, and people's curiosity was aroused. There was no overhead for the gig so I jumped on everybody to try to get their sound. But they were not synchronised with me, their loop was too weak to be workable. Also: I could only give the microphone to people at the front, and that same girl was there, refusing to participate at several occasions. With that crippled rhythm the energy gradually vanished. The general atmosphere was ambivalent. I could not figure if people were having fun or laughing at me. The last bit of the show was a joke about a women putting a flower into her vagina. I did not understand it. In the confusion I put a flower under my skirt, fell on the ground, and screamed.
Ljubljana - YHD Metelkova, kind'o'squat, 10 people, mainly women. Another gig without overheads. As the sociological show had already been performed in February in the Gromki Theater in Metelkova, something different was welcome. The presentation that night was like the previous one, except that nobody was aggressed and there was no flower.
Brescia - Magasino 47, communist center, 5 people in their thirties. More than two hours of soundcheck was necessary to get the effects through the mixing desk . There was one overhead this time, but it was weak, and people did not care or understand what was expected from them. For once I felt there was a language problem. My own voice was very loud in the monitor, which prevented me from listening to the others properly, and from screaming. The show was aborted after 2 or 3 minutes.
Zurich - Ramistrasse 84's garden, squat, 25 men and women of all ages. Nice atmosphere with one loud overhead and wild people spontaneously imitating animals. Pille lent me his four track so I had control of the sound for once. There was no monitor though; what I could hear was dry. The audience was really great, except that people were far away from me, which made their sounds a bit aggressive. I was very stressed with the new set, and fucked up the rhythm of the show, but the circumstances kept it afloat.
Schwyz - Himmel, kind o'squat, 35 young people of both sexes. Definitely the best social sound installation of this tour. People were just great, totally synchronised with each other and with me, having fun all the way through. The situation was this: little room, one hidden overhead over the seated, quiet audience. I had a mixing desk on stage. We made the sound of our voices travel together. The transparent wall between actor and spectators had melt into a delicious funky cream.
Lausanne - Trashland's spring room, squat, 15 people of both sexes. This installation was unusual due to the fact I knew everybody in the audience, and was too nervous. When people shouted 'cos the overhead was too weak, I started making one mistake after the other. During the show, people were talking to me as the friend they know, which could have been nice - but it broke the conductor/choir relation. No chance to build sounds together; The sound became chaos. The show aborted.