People in the Dunes II - Performance in 5 movements
During their residency at Daïmôn (Gatineau) in March 2020, Bettina Hoffmann, visual artist with a focus on video and performance from Montreal/originally Berlin and composer Haruka Hirayama from Tokyo, were exploring body movements interacting with sounds. They started their collaboration in early 2018 which culminated in public performances at various venues in Tokyo in 2018 and 2019.
People in the Dunes II is an exploration of the multifaceted possibilities of sound creation and modulation through physical interaction. We are experimenting with the sounds of everyday actions, instruments, synthesisers and speech in multiple languages.
Different types of motion sensors are applied to bodies so that movements trigger sounds and are used as sound controllers to change volume, particles of sounds and their frequency of repetition, pitch, reverb and delay time and more. Absence of movement or specific body poses will produce silence.
The title of our project is inspired by the novel The Woman in the Dunes by Abe Kobo (1962), that is depicting a situation of a man trapped in the dunes, fighting the ever-flowing sand, as well as other humans who prevent him from leaving. Our project People in the Dunes deals with the feeling of being trapped, with conflicts and tensions between people, self and other, exteriority and interiority, seeing and being seen. We aim to express this complexity through performances of body movements and a variety of sounds that influence and change each other reciprocally to create a complex piece of music.
People in the Dunes II consists of five acts or movements performed by dancers Véronique Gaudreau, Ashley Bowa and Lucile Godet.
Click on the images or the following titles to watch the video documentation on Vimeo
First movement - Waves
Second movement - Her, Him, Them
Third movement - Please remain seated (for the entire performance)
Forth movement – In Between Self and Other
Fifth movement – Human (Under) Ground
