"Innovative Poetry and Digital Culture in the 21st Century" (by Simon Pomery)
Text-Sound Composition and Research, JAPAN
2nd Year PhD English -
TECHNE Associate
"Two lines of development in concrete sound poetry seem to be complementary. One, the attempt to come to terms with scientific and technological development in order to enable man to continue to be at home in his world, the humanisation of the machine, the marrying of human warmth to the coldness of much electronically generated sound. The other, the return to the primitive, to incantation and ritual, to the coming together again of music and poetry, the amalgamation with movement and dance, the growth of the voice to its full physical powers again as part of the body, the body as language".
- Bob Cobbing, quoted in Teddy Hultberg, "A Few Points of Departure", in Literally Speaking: Sound Poetry and Text-Sound Composition (Göteborg: Bo Ejeby Edition, 1993), 10.
The second chapter of my PhD is focused on sound poetry. The Royal Holloway travel grant enabled me to fly to Japan and travel by train to see a performance of sound poet Tomomi Adachi in Kyoto, to give text-sound composition performances in Toyko and Osaka, lead informal poetry workshops, interview Japanese artists on the use of voice in their work, and train in Taiko drumming with the Ondekoza in Saitama.
In music, I have long been interested in Japanese experimental music, especially with Marginal Consort, Hijokaidan, Incapacitants, Keiji Haino, Merzbow, and Pain Jerk. While these artists can be seen to represent an anti-academic stance, ruthlessly uncompromising art with no interest in being received by academic circles, the use, or mis-use, of voice runs through the 'noise of voice' of Junko in both her solo work and with Hijokaidan, and through the shamanic virtuosity of Keiji Haino. In terms of classification, Tomomi Adachi is not a noise artist, but a composer. The poets I am researching all share an interdisciplinarity, what poet cris cheek has termed "hybridising writing", and so classification can be difficult, compounded further by the nowness of their work, their recent experiments, and the challenge as a researcher to say something new about poetry this new.
Adachi's sound poetry appeals to me because of its dislocation from words into the realm of sound composition. His electronic setup resembles something of a mad scientist: he attaches microphones to his chest, cheeks, arms, in order to trigger various processes in his laptop. Shrieks, words, whispers, inhalations, exhalations are all magnified by the electronic processes to which they are subjected. The academic study of his work is especially exciting and interdisciplinary since, for Adachi, there was no formal history or context of sound poetry in Japan: part of the innovation of his art is to create a context out of nothing.
My aim was to try and investigate ancient and contemporary aspects of Japanese culture relating to voice, and to try and interrogate ways in which primitive sound production and artistic practice relates to contemporary sound poetry, and vice versa: drum and voice training with the taiko drum ensemble Ondekoza; text-sound performances and workshops in Tokyo and Osaka; zazen study in Kyoto; visiting Mariko Mori's 'Cycloid' exhibition at Scai the Bathhouse, and 'My Body, Your Voice' Mori Art Museum; attendance of Adachi's performance in Kyoto, and what ended up as a follow-up interview conducted in Berlin due to the artist's busy schedule.
During my time with the Ondekoza, I interviewed Sho, a Japanese drummer who studied at the University of California. Initially, I explained my interest in taiko, sound, and voice, and we discussed Taiko Boom, Shawn Bender's introduction to the problem of playing and trying to understand taiko drumming as a westerner. When asked about the power of voice in taiko, Sho explained that the vocal shouts of an ensemble often function to inspire and encourage the soloist of the group, to urge him to keep going, to keep his energy up, to focus his chi, and that the louder the scream, the more it emerges from the stomach of the screamer, the more effective it will be on the soloist, the group, the music being created, and on the listener. Here, the physical production and sharing of 'energy', chi, gives the performers a centre. The reason for shouting, Sho told me, is similar for martial artists: indeed, the referee will not record a punch if the attacker has forgotten to let out a belly-scream while punching. Sonically, a good scream of this kind is powerful: guttural, growling, it rasps from deep in the stomach, or is screeched out into an ear-throttling treble. The pitch is dragged out from the performer's whole body, and must be timed to coincide with cantering baseballbat-sized drumsticks into one of the Ondekoza's 60"-diameter 'odaikos' (the largest of taiko drums, and the ones used in temples, which are hit "in order to wake up God").
I gave two text-sound performances, in Tokyo and Osaka. Both of these were followed by informal workshops with artists. The texts and sounds I brought to Japan are influenced by what Paul Virilio has called, in The Information Bomb, "Grand-Scale Transhorizon Optics", an aesthetics for coping with globalisation, moving beyond it, if one can. What was interesting about my workshops with Japanese artists, which was also crucial to the 'My Body, Your Voice' exhibition at Mori Art Museum, is the relationship of the individual, and the solo voice, to the self-deleting city around it. Artists such as Koshiro Hino, Microdiet, and Yousuke Yukimatsu expressed concern at the pre-Olympic development of Tokyo. High up in the tower of Mori Art Museum, I watched a video of a labourer who spoke on how much of Shibuya is disappearing to make way for new Olympic buildings. I am fascinated by the emergence of poetries and artistic practices for which there are not, as yet, contexts. As a result of my travel grant I experienced a new world, one that superseded the imagined amalgamated collaged Japan of my dreams, of the records, films, and books that had inspired me previously. I made a self-released CDR of the performances, titled "Libations and Sensations", interviewed many artists, and furthered the depth of my research not only for the first year of my PhD, but for my future life.
http://cargocollective.com/simonpomery
http://cargocollective.com/bloodmusic/
Sound recordings:
https://bloodmusicbloodmusic.bandcamp.com/
Film (Tokyo):
https://www.instagram.com/p/BDN8BXxpInI/
Performance poster, Osaka
Mariko Mori, SCAI Bathhouse, Kyoto
Mariko Mori, SCAI Bathhouse, Kyoto
Odaiko drum, Meiji Shrine, Yoyogi Park, Toyko
Playing odaiko drum, Ondekoza training hall, Saitama, Tokyo