Every day we are exposed to myriad sounds, yet rarely do we pay attention to their qualities and agency. Squiggle Room allows participants to engage with their voices, their bodies, and their surroundings in new ways. This is facilitated through this extraordinary experience which focuses on sound and movement. Expand your understanding of the abilities of sound and movement through workshops that center around developing these connections in an open and welcoming space. Each workshop will have a particular focus throughout the symposium and will be guided by artists and performers who have cultivated a unique perspective to share.
Kate Lafferty
Squiggle Room / sound and movement symposium is a series of free workshops based on sound and movement. Everyone welcome. No experience needed. Do all or pick and choose.
Wed 20 – Sat 23 April
Alte Handelsschule
Giesserstr 75
enter through courtyard
Schedule
Wednesday 20 April
16.00 doors open
16.30 introductions and noise choir JD
18.00 soup dinner by PK
19.00 – 21.00 noise choir cont. JD
Thursday 21 April
13.00 doors open
13.30 freeing the voice VM
16.00 break
16.30 soundwalk JD
18.00 break
19.00 – 21.00 graphic scores GS
Friday 22 April
13.00 doors open
13.30 connecting the breath to movement VM
16.00 break
16.30 making sound art with consumer objects JD
19.00 break
19.30 – 22.00 noise choir + Jam JD
Saturday 23 April
14.00 – 18.00 processional music workshop + picnic (in park)
“Music is everywhere,” -John Cage
about the workshops
Noise Choir (Jolon Dixon)
How to make noise with our voices together. A gentle introduction to a way to improvise together with voice using text and hand gestures, developing ideas that come from sonic poetry, Fluxus and free jazz. Open to anybody.
Freeing the voice (ViVine)
During the session we will touch the deep imagination and the breath and observe how to relate to the natural breathing and turn it into a sound through sighs of relief. Besides of comfortable clothes, please bring a jumper or a second warm layer, since part of the work is meditative and relaxing.
Soundwalk (Jolon Dixon)
a chance to walk together in silence, experiencing the soundscape around us. Focussing in on sound can give us fresh perspectives on the physical and social environments we live in and be an object of contemplation in itself. Come with good walking shoes and open ears.
Graphic Scores (Gregor Forbes)
In this workshop we will experiment with how simple drawings and diagrams can provoke fascinating musical textures and bring about novel forms of social interaction in sound, without requiring any prior knowledge or skill. After playing with some pre-written scores, we will devise our own ideas and perform them.
Connecting breath to movement (ViVine)
In this session we will explore how the moving breath or how the breath initiates the movement within one hour performing, breathing and excersing scheme, created to stretch and warm up the body und open up the voice channel, since voice is breath. Moreover it is a great tool to stimulate group synergy and to improve the focus.
Wear comfortable training clothes. We are going to sit for a while in seiza (on the hills with bended knees and flat feet), so if your buttocks can’t touch the hills and sit relaxed, please bring a yoga or any pillow or let us now, so we provide it for you.
Making Sound art with Consumer objects (Jolon Dixon)
Bring along your phones, computer or bluetooth speakers, electric toothbrushes, containers, tubes, pots and pans or any objects you think might sound interesting and we’ll explore a variety of ways to record and transform sound without needing specialist equipment. Open to everyone!
Jam (Jolon Dixon)
a open time for making sound and music together. Ensembles will be made from names from a hat, from scratch. All are welcome, but no amplification allowed – there are neighbours!
Processional Music (Jolon Dixon)
A opportunity to bring all the ideas of the week together in a local park. We’ll find a way to combine the weird and wonderful sounds and thoughts we’ve made earlier in the week into a performance for a marching/walking/moving ensemble. We’ll play with space, synchrony and motion and discover how sound can interweave with these elements. Followed by a pot-luck picnic. Bring yourself and sunshine if you can : )
about the workshop facilitators:
Jolon Dixon is a New Zealand-born live artist, wordsmith and multimedia composer based in Leipzig. He studied theatre in Dunedin and music composition at the Edinburgh College of Art and has performed and improvised in Berlin, Manchester and Glasgow. He makes live art and frozen art too, sometimes in front of audiences. He also makes scores, texts and other objects for himself and others which use simple tasks, interventions and constraints to encourage people to interact with the non-determined happenstance of the space.
His work aims to make a drama between sounds, objects, and bodies wrestling with the array of stimulus that emerges from a constructed social and embodied environment. His sound and music is by turns piquant, playful and sometimes even tuneful and in his text and video he explores the intersection of poetry, anthropology and technology.
Gregor Forbes is a composer and performer from Scotland, based in Leipzig. His work encompasses experimental approaches to contemporary classical music, such as alternative forms of notation, expanded notions of tuning and aspects of improvisation. In 2019, Gregor was the inaugural recipient of the scholarship and composer-in-residence programme of the Hanns Eisler Haus, Leipzig, which culminated in the premiere of a major new work at the Gewandhaus Musica Nova series. Gregor has been the Artistic Director of Glasgow Experimental Music Series since 2014, and Musical Director of the composers’ lecture-recital series ‘Neues bei Grieg’ in Leipzig since 2021. He is active as a pianist in the improvisation and jazz scene.
ViVine is a fire, stilts, physical theatre and dervish dance performer. She used to be a theatre critic and radio journalist, since 2013 she has been performing in different theatre pieces and shows and sometimes working as a circus pedagogue. ViVine is a co-founder of StreetBikeTheatre and Show&Spektakel. Her performing art is influenced and inspired among other things by object manipulation, dance and physical theatre, Michael Chekhov acting technique and clowning. In the last years ViVine discovered the whirling as her main artistic self-expression and got very influenced by the work of Kokyu Studio, part of Grotovski institute in Wroclaw, where she participated in several theatre programs.