Paraphrase of a Shadow

Paraphrase of a Shadow is an intermezzo about transdimensional communication developed in collaboration with Bobbi Salvör Menuez.. Working with the talismanic qualities and narrative symbolism of the glove, the performance employs self-made puppets, live video, and the voice to weave scenes of place, action, yearnings, rescue, triumph, homage, anxieties, repose, abduction, and Cupid.

Studio February 6th I flew back from New York and landed at Callie’s Berlin for a three-month residency to finish my third record and create the visual realm around it. I was graced by the presence and artistic genius of Bobbi Menuez as we marked on a two-week research and development phase together, culminating in a live performance, Paraphrase of a Shadow, an intermezzo between Tip The Ivy, and the next opera, tentatively titled X.

X arrived initially as my character’s name in Tip The Ivy and is an icon/symbol that traverses several dimensions and timelines, sometimes even signifying the crossing of two dimensions or timelines, like at the center of an infinity 8. X has been used throughout history to obfuscate a name, to serve as a placeholder for something else, or to be a standard signature for people who never learned to read and write. X can serve as a negation, a crossing out, or a refusal. X is a crossing of two paths. An X symbol can protect. X is a kiss. X is ancient. X is a ten. X marks the spot.

The glove, as a character and object, became of interest to me out of devising a symbol of creation/magic/invocation; the hands. Gloves, as often worn by a magician, conductor, or scientist, are often a disembodied signifier of a metaphysical duty of bringing something into the material world out of seemingly nothing.

If this is true, then what does a lost glove symbolize? Uncertainty! Lost-ness! Irresolution! Incompleteness! I began to imagine animating a lost glove, or a single glove, as a symbol of that magic finding its way back to itself. The greater arc of this journey over the last year has been about sorting through the shadows of self-doubt amidst a collapsing world, and the affirmative relationships that make survival possible.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/nB41RQNkBSA?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

For Paraphrase of a Shadow, Bobbi and I initially started with Max Klinger’s 10 etchings “Paraphrase of the Finding of a Lost Glove” as a format for telling a surrealist story about loss, imagination, and hallucinatory yearning. Perhaps that will happen someday, but I realized Max Klinger was not so interesting to me, and I was more interested in staging the reconnaissance of one’s self through the imagery of a lost glove. The glove comes to life, bringing with it the magic of its maker, the hand that once possessed it.