Sustain piece (after John Stevens)
Smoking Concert, l'Archiduc smoking room, Brussels, 2019
Performers : Diana Duta, Julia E Dyck, Barry Fitzgerald and Selina Taylor
Using only voice, each participant is making - and sustaining - a sound for the duration of their individual breath. The sound chosen should not be aesthetically pleasing - that is not the point of the exercise. But rather, the criteria should be picking a comfortable note that can be sustained for the whole duration of the breath. In this way, what comes forward is the rhythm of breathing itself, an activity fundamental to our existence, as we are letting sounds produce us, rather than the other way around.