spokenword-performance by
Jo-Anna Davidson aka Volta
and
Istvan Kantor aka Monty Cantsin? Amen!
dec 9/2001 sunday 8pm free
Idler Pub, 255 Davenport
(416)962-0195
"Rhythmic outputs of the nervous
system"
J.Z.Young
"The Beauty from the Yukon and the Hungarian
Beast"
Anna Toystol
"High energy vocal assault"
Omaha
Rising
"Diamanda Galas meets Kraftwerk"
Stephen Humphrey
"The
return of Tristan Tzara via cyberspace"
Baber Khan
"Oscillating
supernormal excitability"
Ross Ashby
interactive transmission machinery in progress
Istvan
Kantor
The digital age didn't kill the old hardware of information
technology and the metal office furniture is now part of the new electronic
communication network. Istvan Kantor's continuous interest in the file cabinet
is not a simple physical fascination or aesthetic obsession with the object but
it rather represents a wider theoretical involvement with robotic sculptural
systems and kinesonic information mechanisms. The simple monolithic file
cabinets today are linked together by computers and integrated into a giant
network that functions as a world-wide information furniture machinery.
If we look at office work as an ongoing performance, we notice that
people in offices continuously open and close file cabinets where hardcopies are
kept even in the age of digital communication. This simple gesture of moving
cabinet drawers in and out, sliding them back and forth in their inside space
can be interpreted as a human-controlled engine of today's information storage
machinery. Therefore we note that the exchange of information and the making of
images and sounds are always connected with the same physical/mechanical
movement described above.
With *INTERCOURSE*, the most recent
manifestation of *The File Cabinet Project*, Istvan Kantor sexualizes this
simple gesture and represents it as a principal action-interface that controls
all aspects of information exchange. He also links his ongoing exploration of
the sculptural system and kinesonic potential of the file cabinet to the abused
and eroticized human body. While the human body in Kantor's interpretation
becomes a digital image that is controlled by robotic machinery and can not be
touched directly, the communication hardware of information storage furniture
(the file cabinet object) becomes extended by new technology and mutates into
choreographed mechanisms that invade the reality of physical space. It seems
like a total take-over of technology in every aspects of life, from office work
to sex via entertainment. But Kantor's neoist-totalitarian vision wouldn't be
complete without individual interactive intervention that becomes the engine of
his machinery.
*INTERCOURSE* involves the audience in the direct
activation and regulation of a series of video images that explore the body as
an elemental engine, even as it extends in cyberspace. The file cabinet acts as
transmission machinery and control mechanism for the projected images. At the
same time, it also becomes animated by the robotic devices.
*INTERCOURSE* combines robotic sculpture and interactive video to
connect old office furniture and new electronics. The simple act of
opening/closing drawers of a file cabinet sets off a reaction in the other
furnishing throughout the room. As the machinery of office furniture sculptures
come to life, so do screened images of a naked body hooked up to electrodes.
Insisting on the physical and on the presence and power of the body, Kantor
entertains the possibility of transition, mutation and the beauty of the
dialogue between electronics and body mechanics.
The user interface of
*INTERCOURSE* is a file cabinet prepared with photocells that responds to the
intensity of LED lights as we open and close the cabinet drawers. Connected to a
computer chip (Basic Stamp) and running through midi interfaces, the signals are
transmitted to computers and directly to the patches of interactive applications
(MAX) to trigger and move the images on the screens and control the pneumatic
engines of the machines applied to file cabinets. Each cabinet drawer controls a
different video clip and a different machine. By sliding back and forth the
drawers of the file cabinet interface, the user can manipulate the length and
speed of video loops shown on large screens as well as choreograph the movements
of the machines.
*INTERCOURSE* represents the changing ambience of the
intensity of communication that feeds from every aspect of the spectacle of
noise in today's technological society, including work, sexuality and
art.
The controlling gestures and movements as well as the triggered images
and sounds are both charged with sexual references and ironic statements
concerning information technology and the business of communication.
In
*INTERCOURSE* the lust of individual and corporate power is revealed in purely
sexualized terms. Kantor links the office and the concert hall, communication
and terror, new technology and insanity, sexual symbolism and noise.
