|
|
Ode (Owed) to ODaniel Brandes - A Place To Listen Wed. Jan. 16, 2019 For the first concert of 2019, members of the A Place to Listen Ensemble will perform two works from Emmanuelle Waekerle’s ode (owed) to O project. Emmanuelle is a London-based artist, academic, performer, and improvisor who describes her practice as emerging from between text, image, and performance, between the page and the body to offer meaningful ways of engaging with our interior or exterior landscape and with each other. Described as a “powerful feminist expression,” ode (owed) to O is the result of over six years of working though the infamous erotic novel Histoire d’O, which was first published in 1955 under the penname Pauline Réage. “The four works of an Ode (owed) to O offer a gradual un-telling of the Story of O, a journey of sexual violence and self-destruction in the name of love,” says Emmanuelle. “The four textual scores—(story of), (looking for), O(nly), and O(hh)—invite voices and instruments to gradually free O of the words that enslave her, until only she remains before being breathed away.” Through Emmanuelle’s un-telling, we—readers, players, and listeners—are invited to discover new ways of hearing, saying, or being with the text; we are invited—and encouraged—to transform it into something entirely otherwise. Ode (owed) to O transforms a narrative of power and sexual violence into a radical act of liberation and freedom—changing a violent and toxic expression of love into one imbued with gentleness and care. |