Hey yo my quality control, captivates your party patrol Your mind, body, and soul .... Hey yo my team Dreamworks without Spielberg or spill words Communicate from the Earth throughout the universe I transmit, transcripts, transcontinental lyrics Deeply rooted in your spirit Up, I love the power of words, nouns and verbs The pen and the sword, liquid stick on award
No folklore or myths in my penmanship The Panther Scholar Warriors is what I present, uh Verbally decapitating those against a Jihad (foreign language) words make sense
You gots to get up on your vocab, you gots to have vocab Letters makes words, and sentences makes paragraphs Yo, I make the pen capsize, the verbal with the planted eyes Planning knives ever pair that I utilize Spit juice, crack blood from your tooth Inflict truths, speak Allah's 99 attributes
These lyrics by Jurassic 5, from their song Quality Control just came to mind as I have been thinking about the subject of social engagement quality control and the aesthetic of the art and the place of the auteur within this medium. Recently, my conversation with Esther, one of the organisers who commissioned me and my strand of launderette enquiry, posed a request that had a very guttural response for me.
My video and audio interviews have been gliding along, though I have instinctively come to a close with the number and geography of launderettes that I wish to contact. There is no particular rhyme or reason to this end, I could have continued indefinitely, but alas timescales bring me to the point of edit.
So, I sent across a sample audio file for Esther to listen to, she enjoyed it and reaped some positive observations and learnings it seemed from it. However, her point was:
don't you think your voice should be included?
Of course, these conversations audio - and visual via video with the owners and customers have seen me initially seek to strip all final content of my voice. Yet... Esther underlined that I am of course kind of integral to each of these works - I guess they are works. It's not something that I had overlooked but it was a decision to attempt to edit myself out, for the facilitation of the participant and the accentuation of their voice.
There is a lot of humour, sometimes, difficulty of understanding, but mostly quite fast and natural connection with each caller that sees me doing what I love most, exploring people's lives and who they are through their specific lived histories, and what I have mostly in this project is blind conversations or Zoom dodgy wifi connection calls. In me, I felt the rise, of
- no that is not an option
I am the catalyst for the voice of others, this is their time, their chance to be heard and to share their experiences. She told me my gift was connecting with others, for making people feel safe and open up quickly. It is that my work is so defined by the umbilical receipt of the audience/participant who at once co-creates and is beneficiary of much of my works.
I was rather defiant, clearly in my performances like Military Craft , Shadow Dance or Tarot De Marseille, I am just a curated body that enacts what social/political/contextual expression needs to be transmitted into the audience/participant realm. There's no Me/I, these can be released and, simultaneously, it is when the Me and I feels the most empowered and invisible.
So, how can I possibly reveal the behind-the-camera that is me, the facilitator, trying to curate the best out of those unfamiliar or generous enough to give themselves to this space I have unfolded? That would be my voice and this is all about this voice. So, thoughts about quality control.
I guess Kant and I would have a headache right now, trying to define beauty in the rooted reality of the local launderette.
That's why on in our group call with organisers and fellow artists I said -
'everything is mundane and everything is goldust'
I was being flippant but I think it's true.
Almost as a derision of this process and the fact we're talking conversations between me and launderette customers and owners, and how the editing process has posed me another perspective on quality control.
Editing has always been my joy. Not so much in this project. Zoom has split screens and the conversation is .. relational, intertwined, a rally, like most natural conversations depending who you are speaking with. I think that is part of the golddust, to be able to quickly bridge a gap, faceless and get to a place instantly where you are talking mundane and able to laugh together, like you are not strangers, an old friend. Vulnerable.
I am vulnerable with my voice to enable others to be strong. It's giving, probably why after each call, it's quite tiring or energising.
The phone conversations have been a sound editing RSI, because, there is chemistry and laughter - I am also inputting and prompting or laughing along with the speaker so how to abstract from the political and lived context of the launderette and the voices that are so rooted in a tough Covid daily that has unreliable wifi connection and machines whirring in the background?
To edit myself out, seems, a process tonguetwister as well as making the conversations seem a little ... one voiced? So, my compromise has been to leave surprise snippets of myself for the patient listener as a little gift into the party of voices -I like those secret gifts that are unexpected - so a snippet of my part where I haven't edited myself out because the prompt or question or retort I've made is embedded into the response. Plus, I and My voice are very much part of this project, irrefutably, a performance in thin air across the wires. So dear Kant, for one person I had to edit, every other word was 'erm' and I spent 5 hours editing that conversation of over 800 'erms' it felt, and that was ... very patience heavy...
and the result was a slick, flowing conversation.
Now that is quality control and beauty, alongside some snorts of laughter.
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