MEDUSA (re)IMAGINED
MEDUSA EMERGENT
Medusa Emergent was live on the MediaWall at Bath Spa University, UK, June 4 - 15, 2018. Read more about the MediaWall project and listen to the sound score here!
The Medusa Project premiered in performance at The Women Composers Festival of Hartford, April 7, 2018
The Medusa Project is a postopera monodrama for soprano performer-composer (Misha Penton) and mixed media. It is an abstract re-imagining of the Greco-Roman Medusa myth, and a synthesis of live semi-improvised and improvised voice work utilizing classical, experimental, and extended voice techniques, fused with original poetics and integrated into an original digital audio voice and film-scape. The work’s structure is modular, in that it functions as a completely solo monodrama for voice and media, or additional improvising musicians may be added to a given performance— making each performance version completely unique. The Medusa Project is also an iterative piece, having a number of incarnations, including an online-only original films, a number of poetic writings, and several critically engaged, hybrid experimental writing pieces that integrate poetry with the theories of Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, French foundational feminist Hélène Cixous, and cultural studies scholar Steven Connor. The scope of the project in media, writing, and performance documentation will be updated here through 2018-19.
TWO FILMS
The second film of THE MEDUSA PROJECT and an online version of what appeared on the 2 story high MediaWall at Bath Spa University. Misha Penton: soprano, director/editor, sound score. Original clarinet tracks contributed by Boja Kragulj.
The first film in THE MEDUSA PROJECT series. Misha Penton voice, words, film. Mise en abîme means to "place into the abyss"— it refers to a reflection of a reflection of a reflection...
LIVE PERFORMANCE AUDIO
Listen to an excerpt from the performance premiere of The Medusa Project The Women Composers Festival of Hartford, April 7, 2018:
I am a monster of my own making, a digital phantasmagoria. I (re)imagine myself.
I hear the me who is not me, yet still me
I am Many She-Monsters...
I am the Furies
I am the storm-torn Harpies
I am Scylla and I am Charybdis
I am Medusa
I am lighting rod and I am lightening
I write-voice-write-voice with my voice-body-body-voice
The voice of the Gorgon
Gorgonic Vocality
What if am heard?
What visceral beauty-horror-beauty then?
What unbridled and as-yet unknown vocality then?
Can you hear me? You bet you can hear me
I am made for this world
(Dis)member. (Re)member
I (re)member myself
I know who I am
I don’t have a Muse
I don’t need a Muse
I am the fucking Muse
And I have crafted my gauntlets from the skin of Perseus.
Full creative essay and new experimental voice film published on Question Journal: A New Journal for the Humanities from South, West & Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. Check it out here.
MEDUSA EMERGENT showing on the Bath Spa University (UK) MediaWall. June, 2018.