VISIBLE DARKNESS

 

VISIBLE DARKNESS
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Visible Darkness is fairytale of our ephemeral, delicate bodies in a city of glass and steel, and a celebration of the magnificent transformative feminine. Part neo-opera, part art music, part avant chamber pop, the work is one of a set of cyber fairytales that I'll release in 2020 with my musical co-conspirators who I am so grateful for…

Misha Penton, director, music, voices;
with original music contributions from George Heathco guitar, and Chris Becker, beats. Music mastered by Todd Hulslander. Director of Photography: Dave Nickerson.

“…in ‘visible darkness’, where always something seemed to be flickering and shimmering…”
— Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

At the outset, Visible Darkness was about the physical transformation of my fragile, strong, resilient, marvelous miracle of a body and the realization that I am not in my body. I am it— as my body transforms, so do I. It follows, then, that I can commit to my own transformation: inside and out. And now, here we all are, together, in our fleshy, delicate, and susceptible bodies… as the world roils...

Visible Darkness is loosely inspired⁠ by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki’s essay ‘In Praise of Shadows,’ a poetic exploration of chiaroscuro in architectural spaces (including spider references!). Visible Darkness also features our beautiful and often challenging city, Houston and incorporates a nod to the Greek myth of Arachne who, according to Ovid, is transformed into a spider for her boastful offense against the Goddess Athena.

 

Visible Darkness has a number of versions. The music video above, a live performance with fixed media, an early in-process experimental film, and writings. I find it quite fascinating to look back over these versions of the work— from its genesis to what I think of as the final or definitive version in the music video.

A version of the lyrics and an early text-based conceptual framework for the piece appeared as Rent Asunder at The Future Fire: Read it here.

Early in-progress film

Voice and media for live performance. ‘…in 'visible darkness,' where always something seemed to be flickering and shimmering…’ — Jun’ichirō Tanizaki In his essay, ‘In Praise of Shadows,’ Jun’ichirō Tanizaki uses the phrase ‘visible darkness,’ embracing a murky interiority ‘…in which ghosts and monsters were active, and indeed was not the woman who lived in it… —was she not of a kind with them?’ In my current performance practice work-in-progress, I explore inner darkness: the breaking apart and putting-back-together of the self: a (re)membering and (re)invention of identity / selfhood through an exploration of the voice and body. I liken this process to feminine expressions of the transformative monstrous in Western mythos, such as the iconic images of Medusa or Arachne as well as futuristic technological interventions of the body-machine in cybernetics. These investigations question the stability of self / identity and its subsequent reinvention, with vocality serving as the creative / expressive conduit.

Live in-progress performance (edit)

Visible Darkness: a work in progress / excerpts (5 minute edit of 20 minute performance) Misha Penton, voice, sound score film. Presented at Voice and the Unknown. An international vocal performance research symposium. Inter Arts Center, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden. January 28-30 2019.

References

Tanizaki, Jun'ichirō. "In Praise of Shadows". The Art of the Personal Essay. An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Phillip Lopate, ed. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, trans. New York: Anchor Books, 1995.

 
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