last night's fennesz/vladislav delay show at the brooklyn anchorage
extended this to its logical limits. the artists apparently performed
on some upper level of the space, not visible to the audience. large video
screens displaying minimal video art provided sufficient visual stimulus.
it worked. very well. mere sight of the artist and laptop would have
provided very little information: he has hair, or he doesn't; he appears
to be trying to convey his work of manipulating data via physical
inflections, or he isn't.
in this presentation, the work and the listener's experience of it were
freed from any traditional concept of performance. there was almost
an element of religious dogma at work: the listener had a "fennesz
experience", but was content to take it on faith that the unseen and
unseeable fennesz was "up there", somewhere.
possibly the future for presentation of this most un-physical genre of
music?