Answer Machine Tape, 1987, for piano and multimedia, will be performed on 18th October at the Transit Festival in Leuven, Belgium. It will be performed by Zubin Kanga, who commissioned the piece, at STUK in a late-night concert. More information and tickets here.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 was made in collaboration with Zubin and programmer Simon Hendry, based on a concept developed in collaboration with Ted Huffman. It focuses on New York visual artist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death Peter Hujar, his close friend and fellow artist, from AIDS-related illness in 1987. The focal point of the work is Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape from the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers. Using new sensor technology from the Augmented Instruments Lab, the piano is turned into a huge typewriter to transcribe, comment on and illuminate the messages. The result is, I hope, a poignant and intimate exploration of that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.
Photo by Robin Clewley, taken at a performance at HCMF, Huddersfield, 2022.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 has been shortlisted for the Small Chamber Composition category of the 2023 Ivors Classical Awards. The awards ceremony will take place at the British Film Institute on the South Bank in London on 14th November 2023. The other shortlisted composers are Newton Armstrong, Matthew Grouse, Josephine Stephenson and Larry Goves.
Among the most fascinating of contemporary British composers is Philip Venables, whose flair for the theatrical is matched by a subversive sleight of hand that comes inherent to all natural storytellers. Recurrent themes across their works include politics, sexuality, gender and violence – motifs that do of course intertwine, though more broadly share the quality of relating to whether one lives alongside or against the grain of our society. There are all sorts of tales Venables opts to tell, from maternal memoirs and posthumously performed plays to true-story accounts of runaway teens and the vengeful reflections of world-class boxing athletes. They come in all manner of guises too: operas for adults or for children, site-specific soundworks, concertos and pieces of spoken word. Even shouted word, in some cases.
Based between Berlin and London, Venables nurtured their career as a composer and collaborative artist for several years before their breakthrough operatic adaptation of late playwright Sarah Kane’s final work, 4.48 Psychosis. Since then, Venables has established a trend of preferred elements to focus on in their compositions: working from texts as source material, immersing audiences in a multi-dimensional experiences, and inflicting or at least channelling a certain sense of violence, for example through how abrupt a work’s components are cut together, interrupting or compounding each other. There’s an intent behind such rhythmic intensity, one that Venables admits to calculating formulae for, transposing compositions from numerical spreadsheets onto musical scores.
One text Venables is compelled to return to is Simon Howard’s Numbers, first in 2011 and as recent as 2021. These poems traverse seemingly vivid memories that devolve into onomatopoeic fervour, streams that wander to the brink and back again. Venables has described them as ‘unfussy, evocative, violent and visceral’ – attributes they look for in music too. These qualities are evident in the setting of these poems of course. Take Numbers 91-95, where the speaker’s account is interrupted by their own sudden outburst as harp, woodblock and flute resist interjecting and lucidity slips from view. The text and music aren’t driven by narrative, but their colour and imagery, the political brutality and fractured hardness of them speaks volumes. We’ll see a comprehensive demonstration of the dynamism of verbal expression as Strasbourg-based new music collective lovemusic perform a selection of works from the Numbers series as part of their programme at hcmf// 2022.
Venables’ compositions aren’t always written for typical chamber instrumentation – there’s often a multimedia element to their works. Also appearing at this year’s festival is the recent solo piece Answer Machine Tape, 1987. Teaming up with frequent collaborator, dramatist Ted Huffman, as well as software programmer Simon Hendry and innovative pianist Zubin Kanga, Venables devised a work for piano where keystrokes are detected and input to software through MIDI detection and MaxMSP. This transforms pianist into transcriber and annotator, developing an archival, perhaps parasocial storytelling relationship with recorded and projected source material: the answer machine tapes of New York visual artist and activist David Wojnarowicz. These recordings capture the last days of Wojnarowicz’s former lover and close friend, photographer Peter Hujar, where the banal snippets of everyday life in a setting of artistic vibrancy and gay expression are loomed over by the onset AIDS crisis. Contrast to the technologically mediated interfacing at the crux of this work, Venables presents unflinching intimacy as both invitation and challenge.
Much like Answer Machine Tape, 1987, the accordion piece Andreas Borregaard is due to perform at hcmf// takes verbatim audio material and negotiates the levels of their directness with their conversational quality. Yet in this composition, titled My favourite piece is the Goldberg Variations, interviews come from the personal life of Borregaard’s mother Susanne to more actively explore the accordionist as storyteller.
As long as there are stories to be told, Venables will discern new ways to share them in whoever’s voice they can – even if it takes a full reset on creating abstract music following a stint composing for opera. Their role is to challenge both the politic of the status quo and our intrusive storytelling intuit in one fell swoop.
Trailer video of excertpts (with non-contiguous edits)
This is the catalogue page for Answer Machine Tape, 1987.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987
after David Wojnarowicz
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 is dedicated to Joséphine Markovits with great appreciation for her friendship and support.
Credits:
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 was based on a concept developed in collaboration with Ted Huffman.
Software Programming: Simon Hendry
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 was commissioned by Zubin Kanga with the support of a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, Royal Holloway, University of London and The Marchus Trust; Time of Music (Musiikin aika, Finland), November Music (Netherlands) and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK) with the support of Sounds Now and Creative Europe; and Festival d’Automne à Paris (France). Support for some research time was provided by Neustart Kultur.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 was premiered by Zubin Kanga on 8th July 2022 at Time of Music Festival (Musiikin aika), Viitasaari, Finland.
With thanks to:
Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez for his assistance with research and for the transcription of the audio tape. Anneliis Beadnell at PPOW Gallery for her assistance and liaison with the Estate of David Wojnarowicz.
Duration
45 minutes
Instrumentation
solo piano with MIDI detection (e.g. KeyScanner), MaxMSP and software synth, Projector and Tape. The Max interface is provided with the hire material.
Programme Note
Over the past five years, Ted Huffman and I have been researching and making pieces about queer personal histories. One recent project involved us researching US-American archives of queer artists and activists from the 70s and 80s, for which we worked in collaboration with Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez. During the first Covid lockdown, I read Close to the Knives and The Weight of the Earth by David Wojnarowicz, and then, for further materials, Marcelo pointed us towards the Wojnarowicz archive held at the Fales Library at New York University. Particularly, he told us about the existence in this archive of an answer machine tape from November 1987, the time of Peter Hujar’s death.
David Wojnarowicz (1954—1992) was a visual artist, writer, performance artist and AIDS activist prominent in the New York City / East Village art scene during the 1980s up until his death from AIDS-related illness in 1992. His work is well-known for its searing, autobiographical detail, and particularly for the spotlight it shines on the development of the AIDS crisis and the precarity of gay life and emerging artists in the city at the time. David was a close friend and former lover of another artist, photographer Peter Hujar, whom David nursed through the final days before his death from AIDS-related illness on 26th November, 1987. Among other documentations of this period, David took 23 poignant photographs (one for each human chromosome pair) of details of Peter’s body immediately after the moment of death — images which then became Untitled (1988). David also kept the tape from his answer-machine after Peter’s death, which covers the time from 4th November— 1st December 1987, and features 80 minutes of messages from friends, other artists and musicians, his Gallerist, hook-ups, and others caring for Peter.
Zubin Kanga approached me some years ago about a new large-scale piece for piano, as part of his ongoing research project Cyborg Soloists, which aims to develop the artistic potential of various technological inventions for and extensions of the piano. As a result, we decided to work with the KeyScanner from the Augmented Instruments Laboratory, which non-invasively detects key-strokes on a standard piano. We worked with programmer Simon Hendry to turn the piano into an enormous typewriter, following earlier work in 4.48 Psychosis (2016) and Denis & Katya (2019). The source tape, with only some messages removed for brevity, forms a central thread around which the piano-typewriter explore ideas of transcription and annotation. The narrative presented by the tape is elliptical, opaque, mysterious, intimate — repetitive and yet never repeating. The AIDS crisis haunts every message, and yet the messages themselves, like everyday life, deal mostly only with minutiae and banality. Where are you? Come to my gig. When should I visit? Call me back.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 is a work that is enigmatic and meditative, that opens a door for the audience, but requires them to take a step inside. We eavesdrop into a private world, messages are transliterated into a musical fabric, become character studies, become reflections on a community, become attempts to decipher meaning. Transcription, and its failure in the face of extreme difficulty, becomes a poignant metaphor for the AIDS crisis and its devastating effect on a generation.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 is dedicated to Joséphine Markovits with much appreciation for her friendship and support.
Philip Venables 04.06.22
Buy score — available soon
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 is exclusive to Zubin Kanga until 11th July 2027. Material will be available for hire after that date.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987, my a new work for piano and multimedia, has more performances announced this autumn. Zubin Kanga, who commissioned the piece, will perform the work at the following places:
12th November 2022 — House73 Courtroom in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, as part of November Music. Click here for tickets and info.
19th November 2022 — Bates Mill in Huddersfield, UK, as part of Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Click here for tickets and info.
The piece was made in collaboration with Zubin and programmer Simon Hendry, based on a concept developed in collaboration with Ted Huffman. It focuses on New York visual artist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death Peter Hujar, his close friend and fellow artist, from AIDS-related illness in 1987. The focal point of the work is Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape from the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers. Using new sensor technology from the Augmented Instruments Lab, the piano is turned into a huge typewriter to transcribe, comment on and illuminate the messages. The result is, I hope, a poignant and intimate exploration of that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.
The piece is made in collaboration with Zubin and programmer Simon Hendry, based on a concept developed in collaboration with Ted Huffman. It focuses on New York visual artist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death Peter Hujar, his close friend and fellow artist, from AIDS-related illness in 1987. The focal point of the work is Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape from the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers. Using new sensor technology from the Augmented Instruments Lab, the piano is turned into a huge typewriter to transcribe, comment on and illuminate the messages. The result is, I hope, a poignant and intimate exploration of that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.
