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.
Paraphrase was presented at Callie’s Berlin, DE and PAF Festival in Olomouc, CZ
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.
