Carla Harryman retranslates Adorno’s essay as a verbal score for speaking voice and piano improvisation. In collaboration with composer Jon Raskin and pianist Magda Mayas, Harryman performs the lecture freely, tuned to the sounds of twenty-first century, but also recalling those of the twentieth. The re-performance constructs a quiet yet enlivening surface, creating a “noise” informed by cultural and gender difference as well the passing of time and the present historical moment. “I do this,” Harryman writes, “not by constructing an antagonism, but rather by embracing the significance of the lecture/essay as a form and as conversation, one that I have entered and occupied at a singular moment.”
 

 

 Preview Tracks

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Preview 2

 

 

  Links

dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany, September 2012 with Carla Harryman (text), Jon Raskin (composition), Magda Mayas (piano):

https://soundcloud.com/jon-raskin/sets

San Francisco Out Sound Music Festival, July 2012 with Carla Harryman, Gino Robair, and Jon Raskin:

https://soundcloud.com/jon-raskin/sets/carla-harryman-jon-raskin/