I am under the impression before the performance begins, and despite the fact it is called Inconsistent Whisper, that I am about to hear all of these instruments copy each other, and gradually I will hear a change between different instruments - like in a game of Chinese Whispers. I expected something beautifully orchestrated.
We are taken down into the basement of the Arches and lined up against a wall.
Down the centre of the narrow basement are different instruments, also lined up with dimmed spotlights on them. The basement is long, and it is near impossible for my 20 20 vision to see the other end of it - I am chosking to run down to the end, just to see the other instruments up close. Nearest to me are drums, a guitar, a violin, a power tool and a woman who I assume will sing.
The performance was a drunk band playing and as soon as some pattern emerged in the performance it would go on a tangent - it entirely lacked coherency. No strong idea emerged. The woman did sing - it was some weird elvish chant from the back pages of a J.R.R. Tolkien novel, and I just was not sure if she was singing words.
Was it important that I couldn’t understand what she was singing about?
Was that the point? Was that miscommunication?
Is it important that I cant hear half of the instruments?
Are we all just copying the people before us?
Are the programmed hoover and power drill important because no one is playing them?
Is technology replacing human beings?
Why household appliances?
That guitarist is really straining himself to play on queue with a lightbulb.
Lauschmann did not solve or really point anything specific out to me. I didn’t know why I was there.
The performance became an unnatural display of drummers, guitarists and violinists trying to play on queue with a lightbulb turning off and on above their heads. It was very systematic and didn’t reflect human behaviour.
Lauschmann, however, did testified to me that there are so many different ways of communicating one idea, no matter how simple it may be - like the A chord on the guitar - another person will always interpret it slightly different and perhaps that is the reason there was nothing ‘beautifully orchestrated‘ about the performance. Every body is speaking a slightly different language. I question whether misinterpretation and miscommunication is purely a human thing...
In between a guitar, a violin, drums, bells there are less conventional instruments like a hoover and a power drill. In Lauschmann’s performance, the hoover and the power drill have no user, and they are programmed to turn on at very specific moments. Even though in the every day life of a hoover he does need human interaction to work. Lauschmann places him in there to show technology taking over the human, or so I'm convincing myself.
Technology is just another instrument to play, that will communicate an idea - or won’t in this case.
The highlight: the bit when the hoover had his solo
