Work
Corpse and Mirror
for violin, cello and piano
Films, Audio & Samples
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About
The title of this piece is borrowed from a series of paintings and prints of the 1970s by the American artist Jasper Johns. In these works the artist used a crosshatching technique that was based on his recollection of a pattern spotted on a passing car: “I only saw it for a second, but knew immediately that I was going to use it. It had all the qualities that interest me – literalness, repetitiveness, an obsessive quality, order with dumbness, and the possibility of a complete lack of meaning.” Though my piece is neither ‘about’ Johns’ work, nor an attempt to depict it, there are shared formal and conceptual concerns, among them: automatism, repetition, the repurposing of familiar/unremarkable materials and the slippage between surface/material and meaning. This new work continues my recent explorations of boredom, anxiety and other ‘ugly feelings’ in music, and rather than emotional clarity, aims for an affective ambiguity (a state much closer to my typical way of being).