Temporality May 26, 2012

Temporality is the third in a multi-year trilogy of work created in a collaborative effort by Thingamajigs Performance Group and poet Stephen Ratcliffe. This marathon 14-hour work is centered upon Stephen Ratcliffe’s poem Temporality (1,000 pages written in 1,000 consecutive days, from 4.10.08 – 1.4.11) and combines spoken word, projected images, movable objects and live sound to create various levels of multimedia textures.

For this third work in the trilogy, Thingamajigs will install Temporality and transform The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz into a "living exhibit". The "living" refers to the performance aspect: Stephen Ratcliffe at his desk, who will be reading all 1,000 pages of Temporality, and the Thingamajigs Performance Group, whose members will be moving within the space and creating a sonic score. The "exhibit" refers to the images (whether visual or other) that are produced from these actions, and the extended duration of time it takes for all these actions to unfold.

Audience members are welcome to come and go at will, just as if they were viewing art at a museum or gallery. Unlike a traditional art exhibition, Temporality slowly changes and fluxes within its 14-hour duration, and the audience is invited to sit/walk/sleep within or around the events that are unfolding in the space. In performances of the first two works in the trilogy, the public stayed as little as five minutes, while others stayed as long as five hours.

Thingamajigs is interested in testing the perceptions and labels of musical 'composition' and 'performance'. We are interested in spending years to develop and create work in a collaborative manner, and we are interested in pushing the limits of what we think as human nature. Our extended works are the outcome of these investigations, and the public event/exchange is our motivation to reach these lengths. We aim to have a high impact on the local community of all ages by offering them a rare extended performance that invites them to investigate time and temporality; offers them a space to sit, move, and reflect; and gives the chance to be part of an exchange that is intended to change each participant that spends time in the space.

Artists involved:

Stephen Ratcliffe’s trilogy of 1,000-page books (HUMAN / NATURE, Remarks on Color / Sound, and Temporality) can be found at Editions Eclipse (http://english.utah.edu/eclipse/). Recent books of poetry include CLOUD / RIDGE, Conversation, REAL, Portraits & Repetition and SOUND/(system). Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet was published last year by Counterpath Press; Listening to Reading, a collection of essays on contemporary "experimental" poetry, was published by SUNY Press in 2000. His daily poems-plus-photographs are at stephenratcliffe.blogspot.com. He lives in Bolinas and teaches at Mills College in Oakland.

The Thingamajigs Performance Group emerged from the long-term collaborations from the individual artists that now make up its ensemble members. Using unusual musical instruments, TPG combines traditional Eastern sensibilities with modern American technologies and performance practices. Creating pieces in a group collaborative process that sometimes incorporate voice and multimedia elements, this ensemble of musicians expands and contracts within each performance situation.

The Thingamajigs Performance Group’s unique process of creating work is closer to that of theater companies or dance troupes rather than standard music ensembles. Instead of commissioning one composer to write music for which the ensemble will play TPG creates each of its original works in a collaborative manner with each ensemble member having equal creative input in guiding the work to fruition. The core ensemble members have been working together for over 10 years and have devised this unique system of creation through a deep musical and philosophical understanding that comes with years of working and developing together.

Since 2006 Thingamajigs have been collaborating with poet Stephen Ratcliffe to create long-scale multimedia works, each based on one of Ratcliffe’s 1,000-page books of poems. Each work is approximately 14-hours in duration. The first piece of this trilogy, HUMAN / NATURE, was premiered at UC Davis in 2008; the second, Remarks on Color/Sound, at Headlands Center for the Arts in 2010; and the last, Temporality, will be premiered at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History in 2012.

The core members of the Thingamajigs Performance group consist of Keith Evans, Suki O’Kane, Zachary Watkins, Dylan Bolles and Edward Schocker.

History and Mission Statement:

Thingamajigs is a genre-crossing arts organization that promotes, presents and performs music created with made and found materials or alternate tuning systems. Since 1997 we have presented world premiere works and performances by over 100 local, national and international artists. Known for our adventurous and genre-crossing programs, many of our artists have gained international recognition, including two MacArthur Fellows, Gerbode Foundation's Emerging Composers Awardees, and a McKnight Composer Fellow, to name a few.

Thingamajigs began in 1997 at Mills College. Originally conceived as a forum for composers/performers who develop new and unique ways of producing sound, it soon broke out of the college environment and into a large public offering. As of 2004 a permanent board of was created, by which many events in addition to the Annual Music for People & Thingamajigs Festival are produced. In addition to our annual festival Thingamajigs offers a variety of arts, educational, and cross-cultural events such as The Pacific Exchange Series, Thingama-kids!, and various artist exchange programs.

Our mission is to develop and nurture the exploration of alternate materials and methods of creating sound, as well as promote collaborative efforts within other artistic disciplines not generally associated with festivals of music. With open workshops and performances, we welcome audiences/participants of all ages and backgrounds to join in a wonderful tradition started here in the Bay Area by such composers as Henry Cowell, Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, and John Cage.

Official Website: http://www.thingamajigs.org