Some of my earliest practical explorations involved immersing myself in the environment I had designed – setting up the microphone + amp and hanging one of the headlights so it shined against me – and improvising text. I was trying to find the text I wanted to open the piece with, but I was also trying to find ‘the voice’ of the piece itself.
This short compilation captures my trial-and-error process of this studio time, as well as a (semi-performed, semi-legitimate) sense of boredom and frustration.
Additionally, I improvised an uninhibited singalong/air-guitar dancealong to The Only One’s ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’. I’ve been listening to this song quite a lot recently, and feel it might come into play more in the process or final work.
The uplifting, youthful, and innocent feel of the song is complemented by my free and uninhibited dancing – a silly yet rebellious moment that I feel counterpoints the oppression and control of prisons and their systems. Additionally, some of the lyrics might be read as accidentally relevant to some abolitionist critical sentiments, either sincere or sarcastic (‘I don’t need rehabilitating’, ‘I know I can’t live without it’, or even an imagination of ‘another world’). It was a good laugh but also I thing might be really interesting to include as its energy and intention is so different to my ideas so far. It reminds me of that quote sometimes attributed to Emma Goldman – ‘a revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having’.
NB The footage and audio being out of sync in Another Girl, Another Planet is accidental, but I decided not to go back and re-edit it because I liked how strange it feels watching it.
MACPP // Jordan Linton 