Lecture by the duo “Moreskinsound”: “Recalling New Rituals”

Moreskinsound is a duo of musician/writer David Toop and performance and visual artist Ania Psenitsnikova. We explore extremes of stillness, working with space, presence and the intensity of punctuated silence and its impact on bodies. Our work encompasses live performance using found objects and instruments, flutes, aerial movement and inactions. We also enact non-public events in remarkable spaces, in sea caves, clifftops and alien landscapes. For our lecture – Recalling New Rituals – we will talk about what we call fluidity of practice, an improvisational approach to exploring space through movement and sound. For many people, their engagement with place has become an Instagram opportunity. How then to enter more deeply into the spirit of a place in order to create new rituals? Part of this story comes from our past works and research into Siberian and Yanomami shamanism, Japanese Butoh and improvisation. We work with humble materials, avoiding theatre and melodrama. The important point is how to enter a space and how to leave without a trace. 

Inactions, we call our non-public events. As modern rituals they search for ways of communicating with spaces by using aspects of the body to sense what intention the space has and how it affects the body. A space of interest speaks to us; we listen and respond, silently entering the space, not in order to create a spectacular action but simply in order to be. A transformation takes place, making the space into a memory that stays with the body, stays with the sound.

As Ji Yun, the imperial librarian, wrote in the late 18th century, in A Note On Conjured Spirits: “And spirits can do nothing, say nothing on their own. They need a foreign agent. Yes, it is true that our ancestors tossed twigs and dried-out turtle shells in the dirt to peer through time. But such dim things had no magic on their own. It was only when they were touched with human hands and brushed with human intent that power flared in them.”

BIOGRAPHY

Since 2023 Moreskinsound public performances have included the National Gallery London, Prague, Basel, Tartu, Volume Festival Sydney, Punkt Festival Kristiansand, Edinburgh and Glasgow, Tokyo, Fukuoka, Kyoto, Nagasaki, Tatsuo Mingei Museum, Nagano. Non-public events, described as inactions, have been recorded in Cornwall, Australia, Norway, Kunisaki Peninsula, Japan, a cave of bats in Krabi, Thailand, and the ancient and silent Viru peat bog, Estonia. All of these activities can culminate in workshops which explore improvisation, listening, movement, objects, materials and the nature of space. 

“From the ceiling of this dark room a swathe of material hung down and the shadow of a shape began to dilate like an accordion opening out, slowly an arm unfolded; this was Psenitsnikova as chrysalis becoming human body.” Jazzwise, November 2024.

David Toop is a musician, writer and curator. He has been developing a practice that crosses boundaries of sound, listening, music and materials since 1970. This encompasses improvised music performance, writing, electronic sound, field recording, exhibition curating, sound art installations and opera. Artists he has performed with include Ryuichi Sakamoto, Thurston Moore, Sidsel Endresen, Elaine Mitchener, Henry Grimes, Akio Suzuki and Rie Nakajima, along with butoh dancers Mitsutaka Ishii and Min Tanaka. His books include Ocean of Sound, Into the Maelstrom, Sinister Resonance and Two-Headed Doctor and his record releases include Entities Inertias and Faint Beings, Apparition Paintings, The Shell That Speaks the Sea, Garden of Shadows and Light and his 1978 recordings of Yanomami shamanism, Lost Shadows: In Defence of the Soul.

Ania Psenitsnikova is a visual and performance artist and curator. Born in Estonia, she has travelled and studied with Flavia Ghisalberti, Moeno Wakamatsu, Masaki Iwana and Daisuke Yoshimoto. Studying piano, classical guitar, voice and accordion in music school and independently since 1988, she has worked as an aerial performance artist since 2011. In the same year she graduated with a First degree in Performance and Visual Arts: Dance at Brighton University. Between 2015 to the present she has collaborated with Dasha Apakhonchich, co-curating seven exhibitions in four countries, exploring the censorship phenomenon and participating in performances and events, include the Grow and Decay ecological festival in Estonia. Their exhibition, One Can Not Be Too Careful, Feminist Edition, was nominated for the best visual art award in Brighton Fringe Festival, 2018.

More information:
https://www.moreskinsound.com/
https://instagram.com/moreskinsound

Organised by LMTA Centre of Excellence | LMTA PARC
Free entry!